Italian Language Learning Reviews

Score: 8/10

Pros:
lots of time with a teacher who explains the Italian language in English; plenty of audio snippets from various native Italian speakers help you pronounce phrases; solid pacing & organization of material in each lesson, as well as across lessons; spoken dialogues highlight phrases used in practical situations in Italy; focuses on the kind of language spoken in daily conversation; in grammar & structure presented in context; exercises refresh the phrases you learn in each lesson; cultural info integrated into lessons; extra audio exposure with CDs & MP3 files

Cons:
fairly passive apart from the simplistic fill-in-the-blank exercises & short speaking activities; too much face time with the onscreen tutor if you’re looking for an immersion program; lengthy English explanations of words, phrases & language use won’t work for all students; demands a good amount of memorization; price tag

Dissatisfied with other available language courses, the creators of Fluenz Italian offer a software product with on-screen instructor led video lessons, conversational phrases & dialogues, and typing & speaking activities.

The main feature of this Italian lesson course is its focus on one-on-one instruction. You’ll spend time wearing a headset or turning up your speakers as you first listen to everyday, believable Italian dialogues/street conversations. Then, you’ll watch a woman talk you through Italian words, phrases and language functions. These tutoring sessions focus on the sentences you hear in each dialogue, but do a solid job of integrating that material into a broader understanding of the language.

The lessons present Italian grammar in conversational context without shirking the structural foundation of the language. You’ll learn to ask useful questions, give meaningful answers and use real-life phrases from the outset. The course stays determinedly focused on its goal of teaching you the kind of Italian you’ll need for participating in everyday conversations. You’ll also learn relevant facts about life, culture and society in Italy, which, in the best cases, manages to parallel and even integrate the linguistic elements you’re learning.

Practice exercises involve various types of type-in-the-blank activities. You’ll do things like match English words and phrases with Italian vocabulary or type the Italian translation of an English phrase or listen to an audio file and type what it says in Italian. These work as well as they ever do, but they certainly can’t be called innovative or, I would argue, highly effective. Sometimes, you’ll have the opportunity to use your microphone as you record lines from a dialogue in your own voice, allowing you to compare your pronunciation to a fluent speakers’.

The entire package, in how it looks and how it works, shows a degree of polish. The smooth interface, stand-out videos and images, and even interaction between your tutor and the Italian words on the screen all testify to a tight performance. The modular organization of the lessons sets the learner’s expectations from the beginning, and the software adheres to this organization, keeping the course evenly paced.

Although some of my comments above sound like a mixed review, my experience of Fluenz Italian was mainly positive. Students who learn well with audio lessons like Pimsleur Italian or even the less thorough Michel Thomas Method Italian might benefit from the Fluenz way of learning to speak Italian.

Score: 8/10

Pros:
good coverage of basic phrases & conversational language; image-rich and multimedia-rich presentation; hear words and phrases spoken aloud, with a sense of how far you are from a native accent with speech recognition; helpful exercises connect ideas with words well, particularly for visual learners

Cons:
not quite the be-all-end-all of language learning; vocabulary-heavy; Italian grammar still left unclear; price

As I noticed when I reviewed this course for other languages, it’s hard to evaluate this product without reviewing the entire Rosetta Stone program, since Rosetta Stone: Italian is in some ways a copy of the same product for other languages.

Unlike audio-only methods, this course introduces writing (or reading) and speaking (or listening) simultaneously. It does this by associating written vocabulary words with their sound and with a variety of images. Exercises push Italian learners to complete those associations by choosing the picture that best answers a question in Italian, for instance. The program then attempts to seamlessly transition learners to grammar and sentence structure by incorporating vocabulary items into a larger framework without too much extra explanation that bogs down traditional grammar books.

The heavy reliance on vocabulary learning and secondary treatment of grammar leaves some tricky concepts unexplained. Image and phrase association/repetition works great for some types of visual learners, but auditory learners might prefer CD/cassette courses with less distractions. On the other hand, the speech recognition allows for better mimicking of repeated words and phrases, even though it fails to simulate interaction with a native Italian speaker.

Rosetta Stone has its share of followers and detractors. The method is heavily marketed and touted as highly acclaimed, which draws plenty of feedback and criticism. Many users and reviewers, myself included, don’t feel that the course is as perfect as it advertises. I have spent most of my life using language learning courses of all stripes, and this one isn’t the magic bullet.

Does this mean that the course isn’t worth the money? It certainly has a high price tag, but no higher than other immersion courses like Pimsleur Comprehensive Italian I, also rated and reviewed on this site. If you benefit from a colorful, multimedia-rich software package that teaches vocabulary and basic conversational skills, especially for learners with solid visual memory, you’ll find that the course offers a great language learning experience.

This course ultimately can’t do justice to the kind of realistic interaction and linguistic problem solving that best activate those language centers in your brain. But, in the end, it can do better than most at advancing beginning learners dedicated to progressing through the course to a solid understanding of Italian.