Instant Immersion Language Starter for Kids is a nice idea for parents who want to expose their children to foreign languages at a young age. With this program, you can offer your child a glimpse of Spanish, French, Italian, and German for a very low cost.

Instant Immersion requires no installation at all. The program runs straight from the CD-ROM and doesn't take up any space on your hard drive. We had some problems with the execution, however--the close functions are disabled when running the program, meaning there's no apparent way to shut it down when you're finished. Additionally, we could not discern an easy way to switch from one language to another, as replacing the CD in the drive causes an error to occur.

Instant Immersion combines visual and audio effects to assist children in associating pictures with foreign words and sounds. The program contains recordings of each work by both male and female native speakers, thus exposing the students to an even wider range of experiences. Instant Immersion also has games for the child to play. These games are appropriately simple and should be right on target for the intended audience.

Overall, Instant Immersion is an interesting idea. Children learn languages more readily than adults, and a program such as Instant Immersion could truly tap that potential. However, even though Instant Immersion suggests some interesting ideas on teaching a child to learn a language through a computer, its design and lack of sophistication limit its actual capabilities. --Kendra Hayden