Software Evaluation #1- TELL ME MORE

TELL ME MORE by Auralog Inc.
This program is designed for beginners, intermediate, and advance learners by offering 4 levels: complete beginner, beginner, intermediate, and intermediate++.It is available in 9 different languages: English, Spanish, French, German, Italian, Dutch, hinese, Japanese, and Arabic.The software seems very innovative. It comes with a help feature or icon which is very friendly-user.This sofware is designed for one-to-one with the computer. It is interactive, though because it allows you to speak to it by responding to its questions. It also comes with a voice recognition tool, which allows the learner to practice their pronunciation. Each level has 6 different workshops to choose from. These include: vocabulary, culture, oral comprehension, speech recognition, phonetics ,and grammar. Within these workshops, you can find grammar explanations, a glossary, geographical maps, stories, dictations, cartoons, games, and illustrations.Everything is classified by themes, level, and categories. This sofware also comes with an Educational Path feature that allows the teacher to personalize, modify, and set limitations to any lesson. These can be done by individual students or by groups. The teacher is also able to track the students' work and progress because it has its own assessment tool. The main language approach being targeted is the communicative approach by addressing four important language skills: oral, written,expression, and comprehension.I would definitely use this tool as a complement to my lesson plans with ESL learners because it allows for the development of communicative competence and lesson extensions. The cultural workshop is great. It that has very good video clips and good audio files. However there are a few activities that are a little dull or even cultural-biased. The beginner level is also a little advanced in certain activities, but there are so many that you could easily avoid them and still take advantage of this great tool. I would also take advantage of the teacher guide to keep track of the students' performance and create my own lesson or assignment according to individual skill levels. Even though this sounds time-consuming, depending on how much modification is needed to be done, overall its worth giving it a try. -Rosario