The Learn to Speak Series Part IWindoWatch Magazine Volume 7 No. 3 March 2001 |
Learning to Speak with The Learning Company®
Copyright 2001 by Margaret Werdermann
Join us as we explore The Learning Company®'s Learn to Speak™ language learning software in a three-part series. This month, we delve into the gripping topics of installation, configuration, and troubleshooting (OK, maybe not “gripping,” but vital information if you're serious about using this application). In Parts 2 and 3, we'll check out the content of the program and answer important questions like, “Will this software make it possible for me to order a beer in a foreign language without being arrested?”
OK, I admit it…I have a weakness. No, it’s not chocolate or buying too many shoes. (Well, I really do like chocolate a lot, but that’s not what I’m talking about just now.) My weakness is languages.
Yes, you’ve got it. You remember me now, don’t you?
I was the one teaching Welsh at night while I majored in French during the day. Remember when my boss went on holiday and wanted someone to memorize a message for his German clients? Yup, it was “yours truly” who volunteered. I was doing quite well, too, until one of them decided not to just hang up politely after I had delivered my masterpiece.
That was me, also, whom you spotted on your last trip to Disney World. That’s right, I was the one who had that nice lady from the Dominican Republic teaching me how to repeat the intercom message on the monorail. Never fear—if ever anyone needs to be warned in Spanish against standing too close to the doors, I’m your man (well…woman actually). So I guess it comes as no surprise to you that I jumped at a couple of titles from The Learning Company®’s Learn to Speak™ series.
The Learning Company® actually publishes a number of language learning series including Learn to Speak™, Berlitz®, and For Everyone™. The Learn to Speak™ series is, according to the publicity blurb on the back of their User’s Guide, “the world’s best selling foreign language line” and is targeted at “the whole family.” Well, that sounds like a fair challenge to me, so I’ve enlisted the help of my nine-year-old and his grandmother to give it the “whole family” try—more on that later.
There are four language learning software packages in the Learn to Speak™ series—English, German, French, and Spanish. I picked up the Spanish and German version 7.0 packages since I don’t have any skills in those languages (rote memorization of entirely useless phrases excluded, of course). The Learning Company® is currently advertising version 8.0 packages, and I hope to be able to review that version for you in a future article. There are some quite intriguing additions in version 8.0 that I’d very much like to see in action.
Well, let’s begin at the beginning, shall we? According to the box, the Learn to Speak™ software needs a Pentium 75MHz or better, Windows 95 with 16 MB RAM or Windows 98 with 16 MB RAM, hard drive, 256-colour SVGA, 4x CD-ROM drive, Windows-compatible sound card, and a mouse. Version 7.0 also comes with a mail-in certificate for a free microphone (plus shipping and handling). Whether you take advantage of their offer or not, you will need a microphone of some sort to use this software as it was intended.
Being the persnickety person that I am, I couldn’t just install the software as recommended. I had to try it out on a few different platforms to see how it fared on each. So here we have shades of Goldilocks—this one was too slow, this one reacted poorly, but this one was juuuuuusssssst right! Here’s how it went:
The closest I could come to The Learning Company®’s minimum requirements was a Pentium 100 running Windows 98 with 24 MB RAM and an 8x CD-ROM. That’s actually a bit better on all counts than their minimum requirements, but I wasn’t at all happy with it. With this configuration, the software will run, but I found the video in particular was so slow as to be annoying. Movies were choppy, and the animated speech recognition tool took an unreasonably long time to register sound.
Next, I tried it on a very powerful box running Windows NT 4.0. (I know it doesn’t advertise that it’s NT-compatible, but I was curious.) All hardware specs were well above the minimum requirements. Speed was certainly not a problem here; and the Learn to Speak™ software worked well. I did, however, run into problems with the QuickTime elements of the program.
I should mention that I, personally, have never had a lot of luck with QuickTime on any system - NT or otherwise. Windows Media Player seems to work for me every time, but with QuickTime, it’s hit-and-miss. This time it was definitely a miss. After quite a bit of mucking about, I found that the only way I could guarantee that the QuickTime videos would appear at all was to reboot my computer each time before running the software—not exactly my idea of convenience.
I also found that I had better luck running the program as the administrator (the user who installed it) than using my own login. However, keep in mind that this was my little experiment, and The Learning Company® doesn’t claim that this software is NT-compatible.
Finally, I ended up installing the software on a Pentium 200 running Windows 98 SE with 64 MB RAM and a 6x CD-ROM—perfecto! A more powerful system running Windows 95 or 98 might enhance performance, but this would be my personal recommendation for minimum requirements to run this software.
Installing the Learn to Speak™ software itself is very easy. Just insert the #1 CD and let it AutoRun. Click “Install” on the first screen that appears (see above) and the familiar InstallShield setup screens take over. There are no cryptic questions to answer or parameters to guess at. Installing this software is a breeze.
Unfortunately, the second part of the install is the installation of the QuickTime viewer. (Did I say, “unfortunately”? Oops, how…uh…unfortunate!) Oddly enough, whether QuickTime existed on the system or not, I got a message during every installation saying, “QuickTime was not detected on your system.” and prompting me to install it from the disk. You absolutely need QuickTime to run the movies and animations in this software. The version of QuickTime that comes with Learn to Speak™ version 7.0 is version 3.0. If you wish, you can download the newer version (v. 4.1.2 at time of writing) from the Internet at http://www.apple.com/quicktime/download/.
While you’re on the Internet, now would be a good time to visit The Learning Company®’s support site at http://support.learningco.com/downloads.asp to download and run the version 7 patches. These will update the software to version 7.04 and correct some known bugs. This page is very easy to navigate (just find the software in an alphabetical list), the instructions are clear, and the patches are quick to download and install.
During the installation, you will be prompted to test your microphone using Learn to Speak™’s Microphone Tester application. My suggestion to you is to leave this step until you have everything else finished, because this is certainly the most user-UNfriendly part of the installation. (After you've completed the installation, you can access the Microphone Tester anytime through Windows' Start menu in the same place as the Learn to Speak™ software.)
The Microphone Tester is meant to help you judge whether or not your microphone is recording at an optimum volume. Unfortunately, nowhere in the online help or documentation does it explain to the user how to change volume if you find it is not optimum. Worse than that, though, if you have not been using a microphone with your system before installing this software, it probably is not turned on at all. Again, there is no help available for this common situation from Learn to Speak™ and the fix is not intuitive for the average user. Remember the “fun for the whole family” claim? Well, let's hope the family boasts at least one computer geek because Grandma wasn't able to manage this part without a little help.
Here’s what you need to do if you know you have a compatible sound card and your microphone is plugged in correctly, but it doesn't seem to record anything. These instructions will also help if you can record but the volume is too high/low or you're hearing a “hiss” when you play back. First, you need to access MS Windows' Recording Control application; and, unless you know what you're looking for, you're not likely to find it.
Activate your microphone and adjust volume
So, we're “good for go,” as the NASA people would say. The software's installed...the microphone works...we're ready to fire up and start learning to speak! All right, contestants, we are faced with one of three scenarios:
We run the program; the splash screen pops up; sensuous guitar music serenades us while images of Mexican beauty spots slide across a map; we are transported to a sunny land of friendly people, beautiful beaches, and abundant Spanish language opportunities (assuming, of course, that you are running the Spanish language version of the program - obviously, there aren't a great number of bull fights, for instance, in Germany so you'll get a different splash screen sequence for that program).
We run the program; the splash screen pops up; no sound serenades us while images of Mexican beauty spots slide across a map; we are transported to a sunny land of very quiet people and beaches where the Spanish language opportunities are decidedly one-sided. If we venture into the program, we find that some of the movie clips and games also have no sound.
We run the program; a blank window pops up; no sound serenades us and no images of Mexican beauty spots slide across a map; we seem to have been transported to a black hole. While interstellar phenomena are exceedingly interesting to us, this is not where we want to be! In the program, some movies do not run at all, some don't have sound, and games are missing both sound and some elements of their animation (like the words!)
If you were fortunate enough to have picked Door Number 1, congratulations! You're a lucky winner! This lovely lady wearing the fabric remnant (Oops! No…sorry…that was a “dress.”) will shower you with parting gifts and escort you past the rest of this section of the article and directly on to setting your options. See you there!
If, on the other hand, you had the same experience as I did with three different systems (both Door #2 and Door #3), you could probably use some help with QuickTime. Again, the User's Guide and online help for Learn to Speak™ doesn't offer assistance for this situation and QuickTime's online help is less than “helpful.”
To the rescue! With vorpal sword in hand, I shall slay the evil QuickTime bug! Here's what to do if you run headlong into the previously mentioned Doors (the instructions and screen shots here are for QuickTime v. 4.1.2):
Fix the QuickTime bug
All right, all of the software is installed and working well - finally we get to start learning to speak, right? Well, technically you could…but I'm going to throw one last, quick and easy step at you just to make sure you get the most out of your experience later.
One of the things I like best about the Learn to Speak™ software is that it is very flexible to the individual user. Each person using the program signs in so that his or her progress can be tracked individually. Likewise, each person's program options can be set and saved.
The Volume option is self-explanatory - the higher the number the louder the sound during videos and movies. You may end up setting this once and forgetting it. The other options, however, allow you to customize the program as you progress through it.
Most important, in my opinion, is the Speech Recognition Sensitivity option. You can set it to Relaxed, Average, or Precise to adjust how strictly the program evaluates your pronunciation. This option has two benefits:
The final two options are what I call “annoyance reducers.” They control whether you want sound effects during exercises or audio prompts describing each new screen as you open it. The audio prompts are very helpful to a new user, and the sound effects can be fun; however, there may come a point after using the program for some time when their repetition becomes annoying. It's comforting to have the option to blow them away if you feel the need.
And so, with our software functional and our annoyances reduced, we're finally ready to learn to speak. We can talk about that next month. Hasta luego! (See…a useful phrase!)
In this, the first of three articles on the Learn to Speak™ language learning software series, we discussed the sometimes laborious, but ultimately rewarding process of getting the program to work as it was intended. Look for Part 2 next month when we have some fun - using the software and all its neat “extras.” We'll finish the series the following month with Part 3 - answers to the serious stuff: Is this software educationally sound? Good value for the price? And what about that “fun for the WHOLE family” claim?
| Product Contact: | The Learning Company® |
| Foreign Language Division | |
| One Athenaeum Street | |
| Cambridge, MA 02142 | |
| USA | |
| www.learningco.com |
When she’s not accosting people on trains, Margaret Werdermann leads the training department of a software company in Canada.