Berlitz Mandarin and Japanese Premier

Learning a language can be rewarding, but it also tends to be expensive.

Even if you don’t fork out for a tutor, the textbooks and software on offer are often costly, so we were surprised to see this Berlitz package, which claims to teach two languages, selling for less than £20 online.

There are several language versions available – we opted for the Japanese and Mandarin Chinese version.

The main program in the box, Berlitz Learning System, was disappointing. Its ‘immersion environments’ offered plenty of photos, audio and text, but the interface was confusing and despite knowing some Japanese already we were baffled as to where to start in the Survival Phrases for Japanese environment.

After some confused clicking we found that each includes some handy conversation practice lessons, but the Theater screen that appears first is so lacking in guidance that we can imagine many users giving up before they even work out how to use the software properly.

Fortunately, the rest of the contents was far more useful. Best of all is the Before You Know It flashcard program that allows learners to practice simple words and phrases using on-screen flashcards and spoken examples. It’s simple, effective and easy to use – everything, in fact, that the main program is not.

And there’s more, too. One of the discs includes flashcard software for Palm and Windows Mobile handheld computers so you can take the same flashcards and practice them on the move – smartphone versions would have been handier for some, but this is a nice extra nonetheless.

There’s also a short audio course that can be copied to a portable music player. This concentrates on teaching useful short phrases, and although some of the teaching methods are a little daft – picturing the state of Ohio at sunrise to remember the Japanese for ‘good morning’, ohayo gozaimasu – we did learn a few new phrases.

All in all, this package is a really mixed bag. We don’t like the main program at all, and it seems daft to pay for two languages at once, but at less than £20 it’s worth buying for the flashcard tool alone.