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Both BBC radio and television have been strong on language learning for some 60 years, and now three first-stage language series have their own integral software components: A Vous La France!, Espana Viva and Deutsch Direkt!

These series are designed for people at home, but the software is worth considering for use in school. Many teachers have realised that the micro can be an instructor, animator, facilitator and stimulator, yet there is little good dedicated software.

The French and Spanish packages can be treated as a pair because they are very similar, having been written by Dr. Marie-Madeline Kenning of the University of East Anglia and Dr. Michael Kenning of Essex. La France! comprises 45 programs on three discs divided into 15 equal units. Three of these are for revision. Viva also has three discs, with fifteen units of two programs each, only one of which is a revision unit. A booklet describes each program and explains how to use them.

Both La France! and Viva introduce everyday situations and develop language themes in meaningful contexts. They provide practice in the sort of language required for such needs as booking accommodation, finding your way around or shopping. 'Where' covers giving as well as understanding directions, based on a simple map. 'Newtown' lets you ask and answer questions about where to stay or eat, where to visit and so on.

There are also a number of programs based on text reconstruction. 'Rebuild' is about filling in gaps based on meaning, and 'Blankit' helps to make sense of something when some of the words are missing. Added to these are basic grammar exercises such as the use of pronouns, adjectives and their relative gender agreement.

Deutsch Direkt! was developed by Paul Meara and Roger Mitton at London University's Birkbeck College. It is intended to complement the BBC's first-stage German course, in the same way as the first two packages, but does so in a totally different way. It aims to help the user acquire a basic German vocabulary, and so the software contains a dictionary of over 1,000 words and a set of programs based around the words.

The package uses a set of six programs to do this. 'Words' teaches vocabulary in 69 blocks of 15 words each. 'Review' follows on from 'Words', but you can use 'Review' independently to go over any block. It gives the German and the English for each word, plus the plural form for nouns and the past tense for verbs.

'Square' hides words in a square of letters and gets you to search for them. If you've been learning a set of words, 'Square' gives you the chance to continue working with the same block.

'Links' is a practice exercise that uses the dictionary like a maze. You must find your way from one word to another along a chain of connections. 'Clock' lets you test yourself against the clock to see how quickly you can recognise the words you have learnt.

Finally, the 'Topics' program lets you use all the other programs with groups of words that relate to 36 different topics: shopping, travel, the body, job, weather, colours, for instance.

Vocabulary rehearsal programs are often among the worst pieces of educational software around. They are tedious and uninspiring, and yet sales of this kind of software are high. Under all the frills, Deutsch Direkt! is drill and practice, but it's done better than most, and helps overcome the daunting prospect of the sheer volume of words needed to be learnt.

In a number of the exercises in the three packages, the user is required to type in accented letters. The BBC Micro has never been the best machine to do this on, so BBC Soft resorts to providing function keys to type in these letters.

These packages are in the best tradition of BBC software: good quality, value-for-money and robust. They fit in well with the ideas behind the TV and radio series. One drawback is that they lack the spark shown by the leading language packages. Those which come to mind are the outstanding Quelle Tete and Hopfjager developed at Homerton College in Cambridge, and Granville, which must be the best piece of language software around.

The Homerton pair take an unusual approach, in that they ask pupils to build up an 'identikit' face by selecting facial features from lists of words. Granville simulates planning a holiday in French. None covers the vocabulary range of the BBC trio, but they are great motivators.

Language software in general needs to borrow ideas from the very best of available simulation resource packages. Granville takes this approach and succeeds in stimulating discussions and comprehension in French. And for teachers considering a more open-ended approach to foreign language learning, an excellent example would be using a wordprocessor, such as Tedimen's Folio which has European versions aimed at the school sector.