Before entering High School, I had a few important decisions to make concerning courses. 'Me most difficult of these was choosing which of the two required language courses would be the least boring and the easiest to pass. That may not be the right attitude, but at the time it was like choosing the lesser of three evils. My choices were, Latin, French, and Spanish. So during the course of the following four years I studied Latin and French, which were the two most dreary subjects I can remember.

While I have always been excited about the release of new software from Atari, I wasn't in any particular hurry for their Conversational Language Programs and to make matters worse I have been chosen to review their first release in this series of language courses, "Conversational Spanish". So, after carefully studying the reference manual and completing the five cassette programs, all I have to say about the course is, where was Atari when I was in School? Conversational Spanish made learning a language both interesting and enjoyable, even fun at times.

With most of the readily available self study courses you are really on your own. But with Atari's Conversational Language courses it is almost as if you have your own private tutor who interacts with you, showing you where you're going wrong. Conversational Spanish can be used by anyone 14 or over who wants to learn Spanish from scratch. The programs make good use of Atari's abilities with a nice mixture of sound, graphics and text. The use of the cassettes audio track makes the course more interesting and easier for the user to learn the correct pronunciation. I must admit however, that I was a little uneasy talking to my television set. Each unit of the lessons contain sections where you listen, or listen and repeat words, phrases, and sentences. The ability to respond with the audio track is an excellent feature, which makes the Atari computer perfect for this type of educational program. I found that feature to make the course more challenging and the learning less boring.

The course consists of five program cassettes and a 27 page course book. Each cassette contains two units - one on each side, and each unit is divided into two or three "learning phases" or sections. The course book, which is very well written, is divided in the same manner as the cassettes with each unit containing a study, a practice, and an activity section, along with a grammar summary and vocabulary list. All this plus a useful cassette counter chart are nicely packaged in an attractive notebook binder.

After you've completed the course, you should have reached a level where you've begun to understand, speak, read and write the kind of Spanish needed in everyday situations, whether you're traveling in Spanish-speaking countries or conversing with Spanish speaking peoples.

Atari, along with Longman Group Limited and EMI of England ( ), have put together a very impressive language course. My only complaint, is that now that I have seen their first in a series of Conversational Language courses, I'm impatient for the next courses to be released (French and German). Learning a language can be fun after all.