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Mango Languages | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Links & Internet Resources |  | |
| James29 Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5377 days ago 1265 posts - 2113 votes  Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: French | Message 1 of 5 14 September 2010 at 3:24am | IP Logged | ||
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I am writing to give a brief overview of Mango Languages software. I have not seen it mentioned on this forum and I think any readers looking for an absolute beginner resource may want to consider it. I think it would be particularly useful for someone who wants or needs a substitute for Pimsleur, but wants visual input. I only did the first 25 lessons of the Spanish course so my knowledge and experience with the software is limited. I certainly hope others who have used the course will offer their input. I do not strongly endorse the product. In fact, I feel Pimsleur and Michel Thomas are both superior products for beginners.
I was a multiple time false starter with Spanish. The most recent time I started (the time that worked and did not result in me quitting) I went to the library and learned I had free access to Mango Languages through the library website. It is easy... you just link through to the Mango website and punch in your library card number. I also checked out Pimsleur. I did Mango at first for a while and then I began to do some Pimsleurs because I was feeling so ambitious after doing the Mango lessons. I learned Pimsleur was more for me. In actuality, they are very similar programs. My intent was to go back to Mango after finishing Pimsleur so I certainly did not “quit“ Mango. My plan never worked because I wanted to move on to Assimil when I was done with Pimsleur and I am pretty confident Pimsleur goes further than Mango. If anyone is looking for a total beginner level program and does not like Pimsleur because they say “I need to see the words” or “I am a visual learner” then Mango may be a decent starting place. My understanding is that most US libraries offer this as a totally free service and it is entirely online. Mango has “complete” courses for the following languages: Chinese, French, German, Greek, Italian, Japanese, Portuguese (Brazil), Russian and Spanish (Latin American). Mango has “basic” courses for the following languages: Arabic, Dari, Farsi (Persian), Hebrew, Hindi, Irish, Korean, Pashto, Tagalog, Thai, Turkish, Urdu and Vietnamese. Mango can be used to learn English. It has English for speakers of the following languages: Spanish, French, Polish, Portuguese, German, Italian, Greek, Vietnamese, Chinese (both), Korean, Russian, Japanese and Arabic The “complete” courses are without a doubt entry level beginner courses. They consist of 100 lessons. I assume the basic courses are shorter versions of the complete course. On average, the first 25 lessons took me about 20-25 minutes depending on the difficulty level. The time is somewhat flexible because the student strikes a computer key when he/she wants the computer to say the answer. The prompts and answers have a very similar feel to Pimsleur. With Mango, however, you see the word and/or phrase. The basic structure of the course is roughly similar to Pimsleur. It starts out with roughly 5-10 minutes worth of review and then the bulk of the lesson is based on learning a short dialogue. You listen and see the dialogue and then “learn” it. To give you an idea, here is a dialogue from lesson 100 in Spanish: No tengas miedo del dentista. No tengo miedo. Solo estoy un poco nervioso. El dentista solo quiere ayudarte. Tal vez. Pero el dolor no ayuda para nada. As you can see, it is not incredibly advanced, even at lesson 100. I would definitely say Mango is “easier” than Pimsleur. It was faster and, even as an absolute beginner, I never felt like I needed to repeat a lesson (I am not a good language learner, by the way). They basically work you through the dialogue backwards. For example, you learn as follows: Ayudarte Quiere ayudarte Solo quiere ayudarte Etc, etc. Each English word on the screen corresponds to the Spanish word by color. This is helpful to learning and is a neat feature. For example, ayudarte and help you are in green and solo and only would be a different matching color. It helps understand the word order and the pronoun words that get attached to other words. You can also take as long as you want to answer because you control when the computer gives the right answer. If you want to pause or re-do a sentence it is easy. The review lessons part of the lesson were very helpful and I felt I really learned and remembered the lessons through the program. It is obviously based on Pimsleur’s spaced memory intervals and repeating based on certain amount of time segments. The software seemed to work almost flawlessly. There were a couple very minor glitches, but they were really insignificant. Anyway, those are my thoughts on Mango Languages. 10 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| psy88 Senior Member United States Joined 5593 days ago 469 posts - 882 votes Studies: Spanish*, Japanese, Latin, French | Message 2 of 5 14 September 2010 at 3:55am | IP Logged | ||
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I have used it and thought of it as an inexpensive ( hey, it's free, you can't get less expensive than that!) method, but I found a lot of errors in the French. The pronunciation guidelines were not consistent and the vocabulary was often not quite right. I think it might be helpful to try out a language to help you decide which one to pursue for serious study. Still, for the price, it's not half bad.
1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| clumsy Octoglot Senior Member Poland lang-8.com/6715Registered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5180 days ago 1116 posts - 1367 votes Speaks: Polish*, English, Japanese, Korean, French, Mandarin, Italian, Vietnamese Studies: Spanish, Arabic (Written), Swedish Studies: Danish, Dari, Kirundi | Message 3 of 5 27 September 2010 at 3:37pm | IP Logged | ||
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I think it's good, but htye made it not free :(
But from the time it was free, I must say it's quite good... grammar explanation, word explanation, interesting format, voice recordings. The price is not so pricy too, I would maybe consider payig. considering it has some languages like Vietnamese. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
 Slacker Diglot Pro Member United States Joined 5455 days ago 62 posts - 99 votes Speaks: Spanish, English Studies: German, Italian, Russian, Portuguese, Arabic (classical) Personal Language Map | Message 4 of 5 17 March 2011 at 6:26am | IP Logged | ||
Perhaps off topic, but is that natural usage of 'solo'... sounds strange to me for some reason. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| LatinoBoy84 Bilingual Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 5577 days ago 443 posts - 603 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish*, French Studies: Russian, Portuguese, Latvian | Message 5 of 5 02 April 2012 at 12:00am | IP Logged | ||
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Hi guys,
Mangolanguages lowered the price on their software and introduced two new levels for the following languages: "Mango Passport Journeys One, Two and Three are available in our eight most popular languages: French German Italian Japanese Portuguese Russian Spanish Spanish ESL" http://www.mangolanguages.com/ 1 person has voted this message useful |
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