New Dynamic English - A Listening-Based Interactive Multimedia Course in Spoken English for Young Adults/Adults

New Dynamic English - A Listening-Based Interactive Multimedia Course in Spoken English for Young Adults/Adults

Produced and Sold by DynEd International, Inc.

Reviewed by Kazunori Nozawa, Ritsumeikan University

Minimum System Requirements

For Windows: Windows 95 or Windows NT; Pentium 90 with 16 MB of RAM; 640x480 with high-color 16-bit display; Quad-speed CD-ROM drive; 16-bit sound card and microphone; speakers or headphones.

For Macintosh: Mac OS 7.0 or later; 8 MB of RAM (16 MB of PowerPC); 640x480 monitor with thousands of colors; Quad-speed CD-ROM drive; Built-in sound and microphone; Speakers or headphones.

New Dynamic English (NDE)

is DynEd's best-selling, most powerful and sophisticated four-level courseware in spoken English available with the translation / native language audio support in Japanese, French, Spanish, Korean, Portuguese, and Thai. The content has been expanded and updated from the previous version of Dynamic English (DE). New features include extensive QuickTime video lessons and the state-of-arts technology Speech Recognition (SR) activities that give students a realistic situation of communication. The number of comprehension-based exercises has been increased and full-color, high-resolution graphics contextualize the language and enhance effective language input. The target learners are from junior high school students to adults. They consist of eight CD-ROMs; two disks for each level. The retail price for each disk is 29,800 yen.

This powerful new CD-ROM courseware maximizes the effectiveness of multimedia by focusing on the primary skill (listening) necessary to acquire any language. Listening is further enhanced by a large number of interactive exercises that target key English language structures.

With the addition of Level 4 (TOEIC 550-700/STEP Test Grade 1) in autumn 1997, NDE meets the needs of beginning through advanced students (college students and adults) who need to master the language of critical thinking, degrees of certainty, cause-and-effect (past, present, future, real/unreal), speculation, logical relations, and other language used in support of decision-making, problem-solving, theorizing, and arguing a point. The large number of interactive exercises makes this courseware an excellent test preparation tool for college entrance examinations as well as standard tests such as TOEFL and TOEIC.

Level 1 (TOEIC 250-400/STEP Test Grade 3-4) is suitable for both beginners and false beginners (middle school students) needing remedial work. Level 2 (TOEIC 350-500/STEP Test Grade 2-3) is aimed at the low intermediate level (high school and college students), and Level 3 (450-600/STEP Test Grade 2-quasi 1) is for intermediate level (high school and college students). NDE textbooks for Level 1 & 2 are available from Prentice Hall Regent and they can be used for brushing up speaking, grammar, and writing skills through pair- and individual work.

Typical lessons are Presentation (listening to a story and answering for randomly given questions), Questions Practice (reordering of words and phrases), Sentence Reordering (learning about the paragraph by reordering the sentences), Speech Practice (more speaking practices using the sound recognition system), Dictations (filling in the blank after listening to the uttered sentences), and Fill-Ins (selecting grammatical terms for fill-ins).

Units include Names and Places, Jobs and Family, Numbers and Time, Seasons, Weather, Likes and Dislikes, Planning Ahead, Our World, Locations, Directions, Energy Sources, Space & Time Sequences and much more. Altogether the course provides approximately 160 hours of study and practice. Content difficulty is adjusted automatically based on student responses.

Studentsﾕ

records can be saved in detail such as learning time, shuffle level, and updated scores or accuracy rates. These results can also export to a spread sheet or a database, so teachers can easily analyze the data or give grades after carefully checking their individual performances.

The depth and flexibility of NDE allow for its effective use with other English language learning books and materials. A comprehensive Instructorﾕs Manual, Study Guide and Userﾕs Guide are included to assist teachers. Quizzes, tests, sample courses of study, etc., are also available on the Internet.

SR lessons are included in all NDE CD-ROMs. Therefore, students can hear their voice and compare it to the model. Thus, the combination of SR lessons with individual feedback is both effective and motivating. In addition to improving articulation and fluency, it helps to reinforce the learning of important English structures and vocabulary. If desired, however, you can run the course on systems which meet the lower requirements for ﾒStandard Coursesﾓ

and then the SR feature will be automatically disabled while the rest will operate normally.

For the past few years the reviewer has used the DEs of Level 2 and Level 3 with some engineering students in CALL classes at a national college and most of them seemed to have positively responded to the programs such as ﾒI liked the way to use multimedia CD-ROMs in learning English because I never had such a different, enjoyable and individualized style of learning.ﾓ

With the new features added, the reviewer is sure that not only the students but the teachers would enjoy a new stimulus way of learning/teaching with NDEs. NDEs are certainly ideal for use in classrooms, labs, or for self-study. The only problem seems to be the purchasing cost for enough numbers in classroom use, but the site-licensing system will reduce the total cost.

For academic use, there are demo disks available. For further information, contact DynEd Japan (Tel: 03-3478-2448 Fax: 03-3478-2598 Email:Japan@dyned.com URL: http://www.dyned.com).