My first thought is that the Mango Connect doesn't really work right now. It won't work in IE8 at all and in Chrome Version 31.0.1650.63 m it partially works. In IE8 it won't show the list of languages and in Chrome it only shows part of the description of the language/culture and so I reverted back to the old dashboard. The Mango Connect looks much nicer than the old dashboard. I think it will be really neat if everything worked. I just don't want to upgrade to IE9 just yet until they get all the bugs worked out. Plus I think ALEPH was having issues printing with IE9 but I could be mistaken.
Question #1
I chose French just because I remembered a little of it from high school. The introduction doesn't really have much about the language/culture. It pretty much just lists how many people speak the language and where it is spoken. This knowledge is especially nice for some of the lesser known languages like Tamil.
Question #2
3 years of high school French and I get placed in Chapter 1. Use it or lose it, I guess. However, I really liked the lesson. It explains the literal translation of the phrases and is very repetitive which really helps drill the lesson into your mind. I didn't try the voice comparison option since I don't have a microphone but I think that the whole system would be great for learning a new language. My only complaints are the glitches in the Connect version and that the lesson questions didn't always specify if they were looking for the formal (vous) or informal (tu) phrasing.
Out of curiosity I downloaded the Apple app to my iPhone. Awesome! As long as you have created a Mango account you can log in and learn on the go. How convenient!
