Customer Reviews
A terrible program - don't buy under any circumstance 
2008-05-26
First let me say that the reason I selected Tell Me More as my Mandarin language program was because of the good experience I've had with their German program. But this ... this is just a disaster. Unworkable, clunky, unhelpful. I've never thought of "Tell Me More" as a cry for help one might shout when running one of their programs, but that was my situation. I looked at this thing a hundred different ways, thinking I must be missing SOMETHING. Alas, it's just a poorly designed program unworthy of stealing, let alone purchase.
Lost like a blind man. 2008-03-03
This is one of the worst products I've ever purchased. The first time I ran the software it gave me no instruction on what to do next. I fumbled around a clumsy user interface for about an hour. There were lists of words to say but it didn't tell me what they meant. Nor did it tell me why I was saying them or even how long I should say them. You would do just as well as purchasing a Chinese newspaper and attempt to read it for a while. At least the pictures would make more sense.
putonghwa in Taiwan? 
2008-02-29
The desc is incorrect. Taiwan doesn't use the pinyin system nor simplified Chinese characters. Taiwan uses Traditional Chinese Characters and a pronunciation key of 36 sounds to create how Mandarin is spoken, which in my opinion are harder to learn but result in better pronounciation.
Please neglect my rating as I don't have this product and was looking for a ZhuYing FuHao product.
where is the instruction? 2008-02-27
I have to agree with the longest review here. About 18 months ago we bought this prior to our Asia trip. It was nearly incomprehensible before we left, and I convinced myself I was missing something or was impatient. After our return and several hours of "discovery" as described by others it was clear level 1 has no guided instruction to speak of.
We're going back to Asia, and I found myself today looking for a deal on Rosetta Stone or Fluenz. That's when I was reminded by that burning in my gut for having paid retail for this product. It makes me mad because we've dropped about $400 on this and other tools to this point and there is a severe lack of methodology, so let me point people to the closest, most informed thing I've discovered related to Chinese instruction. On the web site "doubting to shua" you will find a lot of discussion of Chinese instruction products.
I may try Rosetta Stone, but I am really beginning to believe an online college course is going to be the only thing with satisfactory structure for someone who wants to speak and read. I will say Pimsleur's cheap level one (8 disc, 16 lesson) introduction has been the best learning tool so far. We are 100% on the four tonal influences after that. I was also able to get us onto the correct bus in Taipei as a result. Native speakers can't always succeed getting the right bus.
Fortunately, China is the largest English speaking country in the world, and they treat you like a rock star when you earnestly attempt to communicate in Chinese. To be fair I'm, going to do what I should have done 18 months ago. I'm going to write Tell Me More and find out if there is an update with guidance. If there was some guidance I believe this could be the best product out there. At the same time I also can't figure out what the three images have to do with the word you are matching. I was pretty successful in the first Myst trilogy and I do nothing but problem solving for a living, but I couldn't break the code on this product.
Maybe this is a test and NSA is going to pop up with a giant signing bonus and license to kill for the first person to decipher this product. If so, it probably won't be me because I'll be hiring a personal tutor and going to language school when we go back to Asia.
Software Quality 
2007-07-10
A note about the "look and feel" of this software. When I loaded the software, I felt like I had been transported back into the 80's. Installation messages about graphics modes. Unsophisticated/flat graphics. No installation mode that allows the software to be run without the CDROM (so forget running out of the box on a laptop without a CDROM). If it were free, or maybe even $20 or $30, OK. But this for close to $200?
Chinese with a bang 
2007-02-23
TeLL me More® Chinese language learning software (Beginner-Intermediate-Advanced), 300 hours of Chinese learning, 1,500 exercises, 21 activities, and 3,000 word audio glossary.
System Requirements:
PC or compatible: Pentium®, Windows® 95/98, 16 MB RAM, 90 MB available on hard disk, 4 X CD-ROM drive, 16-bit Windows®-compatible sound card, 640 x 480, 256-colour graphics card, headset or speakers and microphone (free headset and microphone is included)Windows® 95 and NT4 require Microsoft® Internet Explorer 4 or more.
Format: WIN 95,98,ME,NT,2000,XP
Genre: LANGUAGE
UPC: 893416001569
Manufacturer No: 5-006-1
I have another version of Auralog that was also a waste of money. 2006-10-28
Fortunately, I paid a lot less for my version. The descriptions give by the other reviewers sound very familiar. I am at the intermediate level and my complaint is the paucity of content. It took me very little time to exhaust, and thus memorize, all of the games, etc. I felt cheated as well.
Borderline Fraud 2006-09-26
Wow...I should have heeded the warning of that other 1-star review.
Let me give you some background on what I was looking for. I started out with "Instant Immersion" Chinese audio cd's from my local bookstore. I didn't like not being able to SEE the word I was pronouncing and it was very frustrating. I wanted to be able to read and learn, not just regurgitate.
Next I picked up a Living Language audio cd Chinese set. This time it had a book to go with it. It's pretty cool and I learned a lot very quickly through the book and the cd's.
But I thought...there must be a really good CD-ROM out there to help someone learn Chinese. Searching through the Internet I found a cool flashcard program. You could select a category (restaurant, animals, numbers, etc.) and it would show you a flashcard of pin yin or hanzi for you to type in the "english". If you got it wrong you click and it shows you the English. It drills it into your head very well and I liked it a lot.
Well, I thought that was a start, but there must be something really interactive and amazing out there. I clicked through the pages of Amazon to find one...skipping all of the "immersion" ones and found this. Tell Me More Chinese.
It sounded really good. It had interactive quizzes, crosswords...lots of interesting bits. And an intriguing voice recognition technology to make sure you are pronouncing properly...with a microphone included!
Okay...so I've spent the last couple of hours playing with it and it didn't take me long to get that sinking feeling...that I just blew $175 bucks on something I'll never use again.
The reason, as the other review here alludes to...is that there is no instruction!!! You boot it up and you can basically do 2 things right away. You can look at a very long list of seemingly random Chinese words (no "wo" or "ni" or anything that would make sense to learn immediately). What you do is repeat the word into the microphone after you hear it. The program gives you a score. This gets very boring...very quickly.
Next are the activities. Well...they didn't seem available for level 1. Hmm. Okay, so I'll click on dialogues. They give you a word in pinyin, with the audio, and you have 3 pinyin choices to match it up with. The only problem is...there has been no instruction for you to be able to know what ANY of the words mean! It's like going into a language course and on the first day being given a long quiz to answer. There is no point. I know nothing! TEACH ME SOMETING! So eventually I realized that if you click an American flag icon at the bottom of the screen then the pin yin converts to English. Only problem with this is that the original word...and the 3 answers...don't match up to my mind! An example...I was given a word that meant "enemy"...and my three options were "drawing", "chrysanthemum", or "to break".
My first question would be...what does a drawing, a chrysanthemum or breaking have to do with "enemy"? And for another thing...why are any of these words at all relevant to A BEGINNER LEARNING CHINESE!?!!?!?!?!!!???
Next I moved on to the "Resources" section. It has a glossary...basically a Chinese/English dictionary with clickable audio. Neat. Also it has a grammar section with lessons. FINALLY...I'll be able to learn something. So I clicked on the "numbers" section. Well, it does give you the numbers one to nine, and then quickly moves to very large numbers. The problem is it gives you incredibly difficult and long example sentences such as "This stadium has a capacity of 35,000 people."
Which if you want to know, in Chinese looks like this:
"Zhe ge tiyuchang keyi rogna sanwanwuqian wei guanzhong."
Umm...sure. Why the hell is that in a section for beginners? And why is that the VERY FIRST THING YOU LEARN!?!!?!!??!??!??
Nothing about this program makes any sense. It seems to me like they just came up with a voice recognition technology and quickly slapped together a bunch of crap around it, boxed it up, and sold it to unsuspecting people like me.
My search for a half-decent "Learn Chinese" CD-ROM continues...in the meantime I'll go back to my Living Language audio cd's and coursebook.
No Instruction 2006-07-20
This software is basically a series of exercises. I'm sure it's great if you are working in a classroom setting towards Chinese proficiency, but it's basically a $175 paper weight (and free headphone / microphone) if you don't already have a good basic knowledge of the chinese language.
The exercises themselves seem pretty good -- nice layout, easy to understand, and generally pretty useful. The fatal flaw though remains the lack of instruction. The software functions much more effectively as a series of quizzes than as a tool to improve one's ability.
For the record, I speak three languages fluently. If I may be so bold, I don't think that it's operator error.
