Deinonysus wrote:Through my library, I have access to a very exciting free language learning resource called Pronunciator which covers a massive amount of languages, including many rare languages that I haven't seen any other resources for. The only drawback is that it's terrible.
It's essentially just a series of phrase book flash cards, which would be tolerable if it didn't rely on the worst speech recognition software I've ever encountered. I even did a course on British English and couldn't get a single answer right! I swear that my British accent is actually pretty good! I ended up needing to say some things in my native American accent to be understood... which defeated the purpose!
I'm currently using Bluebird, the free version of Pronunciator available to the general public, as part of an intensive Galician study. It's a little boring and clunky, but the amount of content is massive, there are a ton of languages available, and with patience you can design yourself a fairly comprehensive course. I can't comment on the speech recognition because I don't use it, but in general I hate speech software.
Now to talk about programs I really dislike, I would have to put Transparent on the top. It's absurdly boring, though it gets points for having unusual languages, and I suppose it could be useful as a supplement. I also tend to dislike anything based on flash cards. I find I'm able to remember vocabulary very easily, and flash cards add no value.