McGraw-Hill’s French Student Dictionary for your iPod (MP3 CD-ROM + Guide)

I requested this from Mini Book Expo, a site I have come to love. See, I’m a bibliophile and my husband has said I’m no longer allowed buying books. I’ll admit it – we have six full size bookcases in our house, with double rows on some of the shelves, and three small bookcases. That adds up to a lot of books.

At any rate, I don’t need to buy them if I can get them for free!

Right now, I’m playing around with McGraw-Hill’s French Student Dictionary for the iPod. It’s a neat idea. The files take up a great deal of space, though, and the transfer to iTunes isn’t automatic. We’re getting lazy, I think, but stuff like this should be automatic. The disk is really just three folders full of mp3’s*. I’m impressed with the clarity of the words. There are no definitions, no explanation of the words, simply the English and French words, repeated twice.

Searching for a word – out of a very, very long list – is not a simple thing, either. By the time I find the word I want, I’m more likely to just Franglish my way through. What I have found useful, though, is to set it to play a list of words the way I would play songs. I’ve done this with my iPod, but I’ve also played them in iTunes on my computer.

I have mixed thoughts about this product. I want to like it, but I really have to wonder just how useful it is.

I’m going to give it three stars out of five.