Wordbuilders, Volume 1

What's so bad about it: the tape is an advertisement of itself (we are told that people with big vocabularies make big money - try telling that to literature students); you will find many more challenging and useful words in a novel by Clive James, or a set of essays by Stephen Jay Gould (they like the sort of words contained in the tape, especially Clive - Australian writer and BBC presenter); the whole tape is farcical, artificial and... silly! That's a good word. Pity they didn't get round to explain its meaning in the tape. I suppose it would be too intertextual.

Good points? Yes: it is hilarious (British people will laugh, make a comment such as `ha ha, typical', and feel glad they do not produce material like this). If you are a teacher of English as a second language, you can use the tape for its simpler, conversational vocabulary to help advanced students on their colloquial English. People who drive a lot, but don't read a lot, and like to use difficult words out of context, will make good use of the tape. There isn't any law against listening and driving.


Great word selection / Awful dialogue   June 28, 1998
 4 out of 4 found this review helpful

This tape series does a good job of including truly interesting and useful words. It is obvious that some time was put into the selection process.

Unfortunately, it fails where every other vocabulary tape set I have ever listened to (and that's a lot) does. It presents these words with the aid of silly, pun-happy, Ken and Barbie personalities. The obnoxious banter really ruins the whole project.

Furthermore, the in-context examples are written to entertain even the most simple-minded 8-year-old. Animal stories, fairy tales, etc., with large doses of syrupy humor. And when the narrator finally comes across one of the words, he ruins the listener's chance to actually hear the word in a realistic context. So much phony stress is placed on it, as to make it stand out like a sore thumb. "Why, Mr. Bunny Rabbit, you're not suggesting that by not eating any of my acorns, I am actually being (dramatic pause) ABSTEMIOUS (wink, wink) are you?"

To be truly useful, a vocabulary program needs to include a good selection of words, define them clearly, and then help you to incorporate them into your vocabulary in a natural way. That means they need to become comfortable and natural to your ear. But when the majority of the program's content is geared toward entertainment value (and especially when it fails at it) it can never achieve that goal.

Frankly, I find all of this insulting. I feel like the authors are looking down on us in the audience, believing that we couldn't possibly be capable of truly expanding our vocabularies through intellectual stimulation. So, just so we don't feel like failures when it's all over with, at least we will have had an enjoyable time laughing at their light, fluffy, comedy.

In fact, if anyone knows of a serious vocabulary tape set that does not resort to low comedy, please let me know. But for now, I can only say that this product is simply on par with, or slightly higher (because of a better word selection) than all the other vocabulary tapes out th! ere.


surprisingly effective and entertaining   May 8, 1998
I consider myself a well-educated, articulate woman. I scored in the 98th percentile for the verbal portion of the GRE, and was an English major at university. So many vocabulary books/tapes seem to teach words that a)I already use, or b) are so arcane as to be useless. The Wordbuilders series was terrific and included vocabulary that I really wanted to learn. Besides that, it was refreshingly entertaining; great to listen to in the car. I would recommend it to anyone.