Category Archives: Learn Italian

Rocket Italian Learning Lounge – An Improvement On The Old Course ?

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So Rocket Italian has been updated. It’s not a huge change in the teaching content just the way that the course is delivered. Basically, the course has become more interactive which I think should improve the way that the student learns Italian. The updated course is now referred to as the Rocket Italian learning lounge. This article will detail the changes and determine if the course is now better or worse than before.

Get a 6 day free trial of the Rocket Italian Learning Lounge here >>>

The name of the new course gives a good indication of how it has changed. As far as I can see the teaching content is identical to the original course. But the way you use this content has changed. The creators want you to spend more time at the site. It is a lounge where you get involved or connect with the teaching and even other people as you learn to speak Italian.

Originally the Rocket Italian course was downloaded to your computer and after that it was pretty much up to you how you used it. So you could make a copy the audio lessons to put on your mp3 player and listen to the lessons at the gym, jogging, going to work or whenever you wanted. You would download the pdf grammar books/lesson guides and educational games to your PC and fire them up whenever the urge took you to learn a bit of Italian.

The approach was very much about making it convenient for you to learn which is fine but I think from feedback that the creators have received they identified a few problems with this teaching method. It leaves the responsibility for learning up to you. And ultimately this was a major stumbling block for most people.

In reality most people need a little more “hands on” teaching and inspiration from time to time, particularly when they are struggling with new concepts.

So the learning lounge format was created to remedy these problems. The learning lounge gives more  feedback on the students progress. This is done via the dashboard when you first log in. And also the various quizzes and tests at the end of each lesson or set of lessons.

The Dashboard Tracks Your Progress

Getting feedback helps to motivate a student and is an objective way to tell the student what they need to focus on. The learning lounge has multiple choice quizzes with each lesson. The student is encouraged to take the quiz at the end of the lesson. The answers are marked by the system and a score is returned. If the student passes the quiz, he/she can decide to progress onto the next lesson.

You Get Marked And Rated When You Take The Tests

There are two stages. The first stage is Italian basics. The second stage  is more advanced and focuses on cultural aspects of Italy and more everyday situations where you will be speaking Italian. It consists of 5 lessons. Each stage has a certification test. This is a 100 question multiple choice test that covers all the lessons that have been covered in the stage. This test is quite tough and passing it will give you a great sense of achievement. It will no doubt give you more confidence that you are making progress and inspire you to go onto the next stage or take your learning onto the streets and start speaking to people (if you are in Italy or have some Italian relatives to talk to of course)

I think this feedback aspect of the Rocket Italian Learning Lounge is a great improvement on the original course. Logging in and going through the lessons and taking the quizzes gives the student some structure. It helps them to focus on learning Italian and dials down the distractions. This is a major problem when the student has to take this responsibility onto their own shoulders. So this is good and is more like a student/teacher relationship.

Other than that, the Rocket Italian Learning Lounge still has the forum so that you can interact with other students or ask questions of the course creator or moderators.

Rocket Italian Forum - Talk To Maria

It still has the three educational games – MegaAudio, MegaVerb and MegaVocab. These work the same way they always did. They are desktop applications that you run on your PC.

Rocket MegaAudio Game - Listening And Comprehension skills

You can still download the audio files if you want to listen to them outside of the lounge at the gym or elsewhere so this feature hasn’t changed either.

Other Options To Help You Learn

Part of the navigation system is the Rocket toolbox on the left hand side of the dashboard. You can access the forum from the toolbox menu options.

Other options include my Motivation. This is basically information on how to best use the course and how to learn a second language. It takes the form of short articles that you can read from the screen or print out. So you will get things like “The 5-Step Language Learning Plan” which outlines a plan to follow when learning Italian. Another example is the article “Learn Smarter Not Harder”. This talks about things you can do to make your learning experience easier and more efficient. Things like setting up your study space are discussed along with getting your mindset right.

My Notes is a place where you can type in your own notes on a lesson or some other aspect of the course. These notes are displayed in each relevant lesson so you can really make the course your own. It’s a bit like making notes down the side of a book that you are reading or even highlighting a section. I think this is the aim behind the my notes section.

My Vocab is a feature where you can add Italian words and their English translation. If the word is already in the Rocket Italian system then the audio version of the word will automatically be added. The My Vocab feature lets you build up a bilingual dictionary of words that mean something to you.

Considering that the price hasn’t changed for this new update to the course, I think the learning lounge concept has made the course better. It gives you the option to make your Italian learning more structured and can motivate you by giving feedback. And it has still retained the features that made it convenient to learn Italian if that suited your learning style too.

>>> Get the Rocket Italian course here <<<

Get a 6 day free trial of the Rocket Italian Learning Lounge here >>>

How Does The Rocket Italian Audio Course Work ?

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The audio part of a language learning course is probably the most important part in my opinion, because it is aimed at teaching you how to speak in Italian (and understand people speaking to you in Italian). Ultimately, this is why you want to learn a new language – to speak to people.

Being able to speak in Italian to Italian speaking people is not only the point of learning the language but it motivates and makes a student learn quicker.

To expand on these points, if you can communicate with an Italian speaking person, your confidence will soar and you will begin to believe that you actually can speak Italian. Confidence is half the battle when it comes to learning a new language.

And it goes without saying that the more you speak to people the faster your Italian language skills will develop. For instance, every time you have a conversation is like having a mini Italian lesson. You can practice things you have already learned on ask questions about certain vocabulary. It all good once you talk to people without being shy or self conscious.

>>> Go to the official Rocket Italian website here <<<

I think the Rocket Italian audio course is very good. It comprises 33 lessons lasting around 20-30 minutes each. The audio quality is excellent. You can put the audios onto an mp3 player or Cd’s so that you can listen to them at your own convenience.

Listen Online Or Download

The basic format of each lesson is a scene involving the narrator of the course (Alex) and his native Italian speaking friend (Maria). There are 6 different themes with 4 to 5 lessons in each theme.

The basic premise is Alex and Maria traveling through Italy. So you will be presented with situations and scenarios that a typical person in Italy might experience – visiting famous cities and landmarks, like Florence or Vesuvius. You will also listen to scenes that a typical tourist might go through.

So for example, they might be booking into a hotel or wandering round a market. They will go through the typical things you would say and do and some other questions you might ask when checking in.

After the conversation, the lesson works through all the phrases that were said. It explains new words, how the grammar works and how you would pronounce the phrases and sentences.

The narrator will guide the teaching and explain concepts and meanings of Italian words.

The native Italian speaker (Maria, the creator of the course) speaks all the Italian conversations. She will say a sentence and then say each of the words or pronunciation chunks separately so that the listener can repeat the pronunciation after her.

This is similar to the Pimsleur method in the way it teaches pronunciation. It breaks down each word to the syllable so that it is easy to copy the Italian pronunciation. It can be a little slow going but it is an effective way to get a good accent.

Maria (the native Italian speaker) says all the sentences once and then pauses so that you can say the sentence aloud. They stress at the beginning of the course that this is the only way to do it if you want to be successful. I tend to agree with them on this point. Only by saying something out loud will it sink into your head. Saying it repeatedly will ensure it stays there and can be recalled when you need it.

At the end of each lesson the narrator summarizes the main points of the lesson. They may run through parts of the original conversation again and ask you questions. The questions generally try to include parts of the previous lessons along with the new stuff.

The course is advertised as an interactive course. What this means is that you must say the words or sentences out aloud when instructed by the narrator. For instance, if the narrator asks a question, there will be a pause that allows you to answer, then the native Italian speaker will give the correct answer.

You can also click on the Practice tab to listen to the words and phrases spoken in Italian and then say them yourself with the Rocket Record system.

Practice Your Italian Pronunciation

Another form of interactivity is to take the quiz in the My Level tab. This tests you on specific words or phrases in the lesson so it can reinforce what you have just learned.

Reinforce what you have just learned with a multiple choice quiz

This is a good audio course that starts with the basics like meeting and greeting and goes through to more complicated sentences and grammar. Many of the scenarios are things that people traveling in Italy would find useful, like booking into hotels, eating at restaurants and lessons about Italian life and culture.

I think the course will boost your confidence and motivate you to speak to real Italian people. Once you are comfortable relating to Italian speaking people, learning the language will become easier and you will soon attain fluency.

>>> Go to the official Rocket Italian website here <<<

Rocket Italian Review

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What is Rocket Italian ?

Rocket Italian is an Italian learning course. It is unique from many other language courses in that you download it from the Internet. It takes around 30 minutes to download with a broadband Internet  connection.

There is also the option to have the hard copy version of the course shipped to you but this is far more expensive than the download version and the content of both are the same.

>>> Go to the Rocket Italian website now <<<

This is what you get with Rocket Italian :

An Interactive PDF course
An Audio course
3 Educational games

A survival kit
Access to a forum
Follow up lessons from time to time

The rest of this review will cover the Interactive PDF course as the other components are covered in other posts. See the Learning Lounge for how the course is taught and see how the audio works for details of the audio component of the course.

What level is Rocket Italian ?

The course is aimed at people with no knowledge of Italian. It takes them from beginner through to an intermediate level of the Italian language.

How does it teach Italian ?

The course comprises 29 lessons.

The lessons relate to the audio course so they follow the same themes and topics. The PDF interactive course is not just a transcript of the audio (although a separate transcript of the audio is also provided). It gives more background to the audios. It explains points of grammar and introduces vocabulary.

Each lesson can take around 30 minutes to an hour, depending on your skill level and knowledge of the topic being covered.

The lesson can be read online or downloaded in a PDF format.

How is a lesson taught ?

The topic of the lesson is introduced along with any new Italian words. The student will read through the introduction. Any Italian words can be clicked on and the audio for the word will be heard. The word is clicked you will hear the English equivalent, then the Italian. Then there is a pause and the Italian is spoken again. This gives the student a chance to speak the Italian and practice what he/she is learning.

More examples will be given of the topic and examples of how it is used.

The Culture tab gives you a slice of Italian life or maybe a famous landmark to read about. You won’t learn all there is to know about Italy but it’s a bot of a starter.

Visting an Italian Market

A variety of written and multiple choice type exercises conclude each lesson when you click the My Level tab.

Test Your Knowledge

Another feature of the course that gives it an interactive quality is the random button. You can press the random button at any time and a Italian sentence or word from the current lesson will be spoken.

So you can practice conversation and comprehension for this particular lesson by speaking and understanding the random audios. It can also give the student a bit of control over the lesson.

Any other teaching methods used ?

The three games are accessed through the PDF course. The games are already covered in some detail but here is the basic outline :

MegaVocab – vocabulary recognition, match one of 6 pictures to a word picked at random by the software.

A Vocabulary Game

MegaVerbs – verb conjugation, conjugate a verb in the correct person and tense. There are 20 questions within each game and the software can select any verbs it has in the system.

MegaAudio – comprehension, listen to audio of a word or sentence and guess which of the 4 pictures represent the audio.

A set of flashcards are also provided. These are a set of pictures with the Italian/English meaning underneath. There are 250 of these cards but they need to be printed out to use.

Flashcards - Practice your vocabulary

What can you say at the End of the Course ?

The course covers present, past and future tenses. It also goes into reflexive verbs to some extent. You will learn about washing and dressing yourself for instance.

The main verb groups are covered, so examples of

-ARE (Arrivare)
-ERE (Leggere)
-IRE (Dormire) verbs are presented.

Once you understand how these forms of verbs are conjugated, you will find that you know how to conjugate 80% of all Italian verbs. It’s just a case of learning what each verb is and means. This will take time and no course can truly teach you all the verbs of a language. Ultimately practice and everyday use will expose you to the words you need to use.

The imperfect tense is also introduced along side forming the past tense with have and to be. And some of the main irregular verbs are taught.

Other aspects of grammar like pronouns, adjectives and adverbs are covered. For English speakers, positioning these elements in a sentence is often difficult because it is totally different to English. So this is an important series of lessons.

The course also features some cultural lessons when you click on the culture tab.

At the end of the course you will be able to say things like “Please Helen, set the table! It’s nearly 12 pm, time to cook the pasta sauce and the family will be here!”.

What is good about the course ?

The course starts from beginner through to advanced.

The verb conjugation game is useful, as learning the forms of the verbs can get quite boring and tedious.

Random button is good for adding a bit of spontaneity to the lesson. This is useful if you have done the lesson more than once and need to freshen it up a little.

What is bad about the course ?

The pictures in the MegaVocab game are not always intuitively clear about the meaning. This can make guessing the words quite difficult at times. The English word can be displayed if this happens but doing this makes it too easy.

You can only improve your pronunciation by listening and repeating the audio, no feedback is given by the software as to how your accent sounds.

Any bonuses ?

A good way to see how the course works is to try the free 6 day course. It should help you decide if Rocket Italian suits your learning style and you will learn a bit of Italian along the way.

A Rocket Italian newsletter is sent out every fortnight. The newsletter has a new lesson or extra material in each issue.

Summary

I think the Rocket Italian course represents good value. You get an Audio and ebook course and 3 software games. The forum and follow up newsletter are good if you need a bit of support and to stay motivated. Although it is not easy learning a new language, Rocket Italian can certainly make the task easier provided you use it consistently and put the effort in to learn Italian.

>>> Get your own Rocket Italian course here <<<

Rocket Italian – How Much Will I Learn ?

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Rocket Italian - How Much Will I Learn ?

This is another common question that is asked about any learn Italian product (or anything where you are learning something new for that matter). It’s a perfectly understandable question as you want to know what you can expect from the product, if you will need to buy more products after to complete your learning and things like that. So lets go into how much you will learn with Rocket Italian.

>>> Go to the official Rocket Italian site here <<<

What will I be able to say with Rocket Italian ?

This is possibly the number one question that most people have with any language course as this is usually the prime motivation for learning a new language. You might want to impress people that you can speak a foreign language or maybe a job will require this particular language. Maybe you are lucky enough to be working or traveling over in Italy and want to get to grips with the language before landing in Fiumicino and looking like a complete tourist. Whatever the reasoning, you want to know what you can say after going through a course.

Rocket Italian is an audio course that starts like most others with details on how to say hello and introduce yourself. The rest of the audio lessons consist of the narrator Alex and his Italian speaking  chum Maria (who made the course) going through various common scenes that you might expect a tourist traveling in Italy to experience. So I’d say the course is aimed at tourists or people that might plan to visit the country.

Some Topics Covered In Rocket Italian

So there are complete lessons devoted to things you might do and say at a train station (presumably many of the lessons learned can be used in airports, bus stations and other places like that).

There is also a lesson about booking in at a hotel, ordering and then talking to a taxi driver. All these lessons come under the main topic of traveling around.

Other main topics include nightlife which covers going out at night (surprise, surprise !) but other things like buying things in shops and at markets.

Another main topic is entitled arts and culture. It covers famous Italian culture, like a night at the Opera, visiting famous cities like Florence and landmarks that you might see in famous cities – Coliseum for instance.

Other main topics cover cooking and the kitchen. Italy is famous for the foods that they produce so this is quite a good topic to cover. Firstly, most people will already know a bit about Italian food so it is less intimidating. Also, as food is close to most Italians hearts, it could be a good topic to strike up a conversation with when traveling in Italy.

Another topic is family and friends. This section of lessons introduce how to describe close and extended family members.

Throughout the audio lessons, each lesson builds on the others. You will be able to express yourself in present, past, future tenses at the end of the course and also understand reflexive verbs which are common in Romantic languages but quite foreign to English speakers.

Of course the range of verbs you will know is not that great, I’d say mainly the modal verbs are covered – I can, I will, I want, I have, I make, I go, I am etc. These are the main verbs that you will most need often and are used most in everyday conversations.

Some Things You Will Be Able To Say

To give you a better idea of what you will actually be able to say, here are a few expressions that you will learn throughout the course.

I am twenty years old.  (verb to be, present tense)

I am buying myself some new clothes (reflexive verbs)

She is putting on her make up to go out. (reflexive verbs)

We are going to take some cheese to Mary. (future tense)

I wanted to eat pizza yesterday, but I decided not to. (past tense – Imperfect)

You will go to the bank next Thursday, won’t you?  (future tense)

As you can see, there are some fairly complex expressions here and if you really use the course, you can speak to a decent conversational level but you still have to understand more vocabulary and verbs before you will be totally confident and fluent.

The good news is that if you can actually speak to real Italian speaking people, your confidence will soar and so will your learning. This course can certainly give you the confidence to do this.

>>> Get your Rocket Italian course here <<<

Transparent Italian Complete Edition VS Rocket Italian: Which Program Should You Choose?

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So you want to learn Italian but you don’t know where to begin. The first step to being able to speak this beautiful language is choosing the right Italian language learning program.

However, with the number of programs on the market today that have different approaches, features, and tools, it is easy to get confused.

To help you out a bit, here is a review and comparison of two of the more widely used programs. Notably, Transparent Italian and Rocket Italian. So without further a do, here is Transparent Italian Complete Edition VS Rocket Italian – which program should you choose?

The Approach

The people behind Rocket Italian believe that the best way to learn a language is through the interactive conversational approach, aka, the natural approach. This method is based on how people all around the world have learned their mother tongue way back when they were young. Children learn to understand, listen, and speak before they learn how to read and write. So at the very first lesson, you will already take part in an Italian conversation.

Transparent Italian Complete Edition, however, takes a rather different approach. The creators and developers believe that it is very important to use all of your skills, from speaking to listening to reading and writing, in order to achieve your goal of speaking the Italian language fluently. So the method behind this program is highly modular and is filled with tons of features that focus on developing different skills.

The Learning Tools and Features

Rocket Italian

The Grammar Lessons

With Rocket Italian, you will have your very own personal tutor/guide, Maria Di Lorenzi to take you through all of these neat features and help you out along the way.

Rocket Italian offers you 29 interactive audio lessons that are 28 minutes each in length. In total, that is around 13 hours altogether. Over these classes you will have real life modern Italian conversations that have a casual tone to them so that you will actually be able to use what learn on the streets of Italy. You can even customize these classes so that you learn what you want when you want. Aside from that, all are fully downloadable so that you can learn wherever you want whenever you want by using your iPod, pocket pc, or MP3 player. Not to mention that the full transcripts of the classes are also provided to help you out even more.

MegaItalian is designed to add a little fun to your daily study schedule. Here you will have three games that are supposed to reinforce what you have already learned and even build up on it.

MegaVocab is for your Italian vocabulary.

MegaAudio is for your Italian listening, pronunciation, and intonation.

MegaVerbs is for your Italian verbs and verb forms such as tenses.

Through the Rocket Italian Learning Lounge you will have access to fully illustrated Italian language lessons that will further explain certain things such as grammar, as well as Italian history and culture classes. All are fully embedded with audio clips and are complete with detailed notes.

With Rocket Record, you will be able to record your voice and compare to that of over 1000 phrases spoken by a native Italian speaker. They claim that this will do wonders for your Italian pronunciation as well as your Italian intonation.

>>> Go to the Rocket Italian website now <<<

Transparent Italian Complete Edition

With Transparent Italian Complete Edition, you begin the learning process with their acclaimed Byki. Here you will have access to neat tools that are all designed make Italian easy for you. One of the most important feature is the flashcards that is supposed to build up your vocabulary in no time. Aside from that, you will also have access to other games and quizzes, all which will be recorded in order for you to keep track of your progress. Heck, you will also be able to record your voice so that you can compare it to a true blue Italian’s.

Start By Opening The Virtual Book

The Lexicon Translation Dictionary will give you access to over 65,000 Italian words that you will probably come across here and there. This is yet another feature that is designed to help you build up you vocabulary base.

Unlike Rocket Italian, this program will focuses not only on your verbal skills but also you written Italian through the use of Italian texts, stories, and videos.

The Flashcard system is the recommended start point

One feature that is unique to Transparent Italian is LinguMatch Italian. This gives you full access to 30 virtual reality scenarios that you actually take part in. It is kind of like an RPG of sorts where you can ask questions and answer them as well. You can click on other characters to start a conversation or simply click on objects to learn how they are called in Italian.

LinguaMatch - A Bit Like A Role Playing Game

>>> Get Transparent Italian Here <<<

What You will learn

With Rocket Italian, you will have Conversation practice, grammar, and listening comprehension.

Transparent Italian Complete Edition covers all of that- Conversation practice, grammar, and listening comprehension, and more as you will also focus on reading and writing.

To Sum Up

Basically, if you only want to focus on conversational Italian, then Rocket Italian is perfect for you, but if you want to go the whole nine yards, then Transparent Italian Complete Edition would be a better choice.

>>> Go to the Rocket Italian website now <<<

>>> Get Transparent Italian Here <<<

Rocket Italian Or Fluenz Italian: Which Is Best For You?

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Do you want to learn Italian, one of the most beautiful languages in the world, but have no idea where to begin? Learning a new language is tricky enough, but choosing the right language learning program is even more confusing since there are so many on the market that all promise to be the best.
But how can they all be the best when they are all different? It’s just a matter of finding which method and approach suit your learning style. So here are two of the hottest selling programs that have very different styles. Rocket Italian Or Fluenz Italian: Which Is Best For You?

Rocket Italian

Rocket Italian Dashboard

The approach that Rocket Italian takes is the interactive conversational approach. So, basically, if you think you learn best the “natural” way, the this is definitely the program for you. By “natural”, the developers behind Rocket Languages believe that people learn best the way they did when they were young- through listening and speaking. Every child learned how to understand and speak way before reading and writing.

So the Rocket Italian approach is based on this method integrated with features and tools that are supposed to speed up the learning process and make things easier for you, the student.

Learning tools and features

With Rocket Italian, you will get 29 interactive audio lessons that last around 28 minutes each class. These classes cover casual and modern Italian conversations that you will actually be able to use in a real life Italian conversation, all of which can be customized to suit each person’s specific needs and wants. That alone already promises you over 13 hours of audio for your learning pleasure. Plus all of them are fully downloadable too making it easy to take along with your MP3 player, iPhone, pocket PC and the like.

You will even have access to complete transcripts of every single Italian conversation that you hear. This is supposed to help speed up the learning process, not only for speaking but it also gives you a look on the written area, even if that is not the focus of this course.

Rocket Italian Learning Lounge will provide you with further language lessons as well as Italian culture and history ones too. All of these are fully illustrated, are embedded with audio clips, and have notes and explanations that are aimed to help you even more.

You can have fun with MegaItalian. This offers three games that are designed to help you out with certain areas of the language in a not so stressful way.

MegaAudio is supposed to help you with your listening and comprehension.

MegaVocab is for building up your vocabulary and actually retaining what you have learned.

MegaVerbs is to help teach verbs forms and conjugation.

Another interesting feature is Rocket Record that allows you to compare your own voice and pronunciation with over 1000 Italian phrases.
Through this all you will be guided by Maria and Roberto, two native Italian speakers.

>>> Go to the Rocket Italian website now <<<

Fluenz Italian

Sonia is the Tutor in the early courses

The people behind Fluenz Italian believe in a much different approach from that of Rocket Italian. Actually, their method is pretty much the opposite. They believe that since you, the student, is no longer a child, you will need to take the more adult approach to learning the language.

This means that you will have full explanations on all of the areas of the language in order for you to be able to speak Italian fluently. Or in their own words, you leverage your understanding of English to make your learning of Italian more efficient.  So things are explained from an English perspective and as Italian grammar is often very different from English, the differences are pointed out. To this extent, Fluenz is probably more aimed at an adult learner. Also the scenes and scenarios that take place in the course are generally in bars, hotels and consist of things that adults might do.

Learning tools and features

Fluenz Italian offers interactive audio CDs with lessons that are around 60 minutes long. Unlike other language learning programs, the classes here are much longer because not only will you get to hear an Italian conversation, but you will also get full tutor led explanations in step by step process.

One of the focuses of these one on one explanations that is supposed to be very helpful is Italian contractions as well as rhythm and intonation. One reason why Italian sounds as beautiful as it does is because of these.

Also, you can take Fluenz Italian anywhere by uploading the audio files to your iPod, MP3 player, and the like.

You will also have access to various workouts that are designed to help you develop your Italian skills – complete from reading to writing to speaking to listening comprehension.

These workouts are generally done after each lesson and focus on the topics, words and grammar covered in the lesson. They test your ability to read, write, listen (comprehend) and to some extent speak.

So they make you match the Italian words and sentences in the lesson to the English equivalents. You also have to match a picture to a spoken Italian word (a bit like MegaAudio in Rocket Italian).

Fluenz Italian Workouts - Test your knowledge after the lesson

Then write the English words displayed or spoken in Italian,

Write the English phrases in Italian,

Write the Italian words after listening to them spoken,

Write the Italian phrases after listening to them spoken,

Type out the conversation or the entire scene pretty much

The final 2 tests are to match phrases that are using the same words in the lesson but in slightly different contexts to the original lesson. And then to say the phrases out loud – repeat after the native Italian speaker. Your speech is recorded and you can listen to how it sounds compared to a native speaker. There is no graphical representation, you just have to use you ear.

Two other interesting learning tools that you get are the Fluenz Italian navigator and the voice recorder, mentioned above.

The Fluenz navigator gives you quick access to vocabulary and phrases.

The voice recorder, is different from many other courses that offer pronunciation tools. They don’t give you a graphical representation of your voice compared to a native speaker. You just have to listen for yourself and make adjustments as you see fit. I don’t mind this approach as I find the graphical representations a bit dry and hard to apply to improving your accent. In fact the best pronunciation tool I have seen is the Tell Me More  course that actually have a animation of a persons lips and tongue when they say certain words or phrases. This is how we learn in the real world – by watching how others say things.

One more interesting feature is the interface. The whole layout of this program is just so darn pretty and user friendly.

>>> Get your own Fluenz Italian course here <<<

Conclusion

Basically, when it all boils down to Rocket Italian Or Fluenz Italian: Which Is Best For You, you have to think about what you want to learn, whether it is just speaking and listening or if you want the whole nine yards, and how you want to learn, the natural way or the more traditional approach.

So here are all the facts, now all you have to do is decide.

>>> Go to the Rocket Italian website now <<<

>>> Get the Fluenz Italian course here <<<

How To Learn Italian: Rocket Italian VS Pimsleur Italian

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Learning a second language is always a great choice. Learning Italian is an even better one since it is one of the most widely spoken languages in Europe, not to mention that it is by far one of the most beautiful. But choosing the right Italian language learning program is one crucial decision that is not so easy to make.

With so many courses available on the market today, it is easy to get lost in all of the flashy ads and sales talk. So here to help you is an article featuring two of the most popular programs in an unbiased review of sorts, totally honest with nothing but the facts.
How To Learn Italian: Rocket Italian VS Pimsleur Italian. Read the article, consider the facts, make a decision.

The Rocket Italian Approach:

Just like its other language courses, Rocket Italian takes the interactive conversational approach, also known as the natural approach. Basically, this method is based on one that has been tried and tested and proven to be successful for years on end. One that you, me, and basically everyone has tried. Back when you were young, you first learned how to listen, understand what you were told, and speak way before you started reading and writing.

So the people behind Rocket Italian took this method and integrated other features and tools to make the approach more effective, especially since you, the student, are no longer a child.

>>> Go to the Rocket Italian website now <<<

Pimsleur Italian Approach:

Also developed by Dr. Paul Pimsleur, linguistic specialist, Pimsleur Italian basically takes the same approach as all the other Pimsleur language courses but tweaked to fit this specific language better.

The Pimsleur approach is based on two main principles, Graduated Interval Recall and Principle of Anticipation, and supported by two other key factors, core vocabulary and the organic learning concept.

Graduated Interval Recall means that you will be encouraged to remember Italian words and phrases the very minute you start to forget them while the Principle of anticipation is pretty much you guessing and anticipating the right answer briefly before it is revealed in the lessons.

You will also build up your core vocabulary which is a selected list of the most important and useful Italian words using the organic learning concept which pretty much means that you will learn everything from vocab to grammar to pronunciation and intonation while learning common Italian phrases.

>>> Get the Pimsleur Italian course here <<<

Rocket Italian Features and Tools:

Rocket Italian comes with 29 interactive audio lessons that are 28 minutes each in length and focus only on casual, everyday, modern Italian conversations led by your Italian tutors, Maria and Roberto. You can fully customize these lessons so that you focus on what you really need and want to learn. All of these Rocket Italian interactive lessons are 100% downloadable so that you can learn pretty much wherever you want. All you have to do is put the files in your iPod, MP3 player, or pocket pc and you are good to go.

Not to mention that the full transcripts of all of the conversations are also provided to help the entire learning process.

Aside from the 13 hours of conversational audio lessons, you will also have classes on the Italian language and the Italian culture and history as well. The Italian language lessons will provide you with more detailed explanations on certain aspects such as grammar and structure and whatnot while the culture and history lessons will give you a deeper insight on Italy on the whole. All of these are fully illustrated and come complete with embedded audio clips and notes that you can access through the Rocket Italian Learning Lounge.

Rocket Record is an interesting feature that they claim will greatly improve your Italian pronunciation and intonation. What you do is record your own voice following a certain phrase or sentence then you compare it to one spoken by a true blue Italian speaker.

To add a little fun, you have MegaItalian.

MegaItalian provides you with three fun and interesting games that are all designed to help you learn vocabulary, practice listening pronunciation and intonation, and learn verbs and conjugation. You have MegaVocab, MegaAudio, and MegaVerbs.

Pimsleur Italian Features and Tools:

Pimsleur Italian keeps things simple as it isn’t jam packed with various tools and features. Basically, you will have an audio course. In the first ten lessons you will learn the basics, the following ten you will actually build and expand on what you have previously covered. All of these lessons come on CD but you also have the choice to download them to your iPod or MP3 player so that you can learn on the go. Plus, since each lessons is only about 30 minutes long, it is easy to squeeze it into any hectic schedule.

To help you along the way, since you will be speaking and taking part in an Italian conversation right off the bat, you will also have a short textbook.

To Sum Up

If you want something with more tools and features, then Rocket Italian is the obvious choice, but if you like to keep your learning simple, then you should opt for Pimsleur Italian.

>>> Go to the Rocket Italian website now <<<

>>> Get the Pimsleur Italian course here <<<

Rocket Italian vs Rosetta Stone Italian

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Rocket Italian and Rosetta Stone Italian are popular self study courses for learning the Italian language. This article will compare and contrast these two courses in terms of their quality, how they teach Italian and which course may suit your style of learning.

To start with, these courses have some marked differences in how they teach Italian.

The aim of Rosetta Stone Italian is to immerse you in the language. This means you will not see any English cues when the lessons begin. Everything happens in Italian and you have to figure it out.

This is a bit like the immersion process of learning Italian, where you might be in Italy and have to get by speaking Italian. Another parallel could be as you learned your mother tongue, purely by hearing the words and making some kind of connection to the meaning of the word.

It works as follows :

A lesson consists of a number of questions. Each question would consist of 4 images/photographs and a button that can be pressed to hear audio. The audio would be either naming the image or describing what was occurring in the image. Once you have listened to the audio you must select the image that corresponds to the audio.

You go through the whole lesson in this fashion. Each lesson has a particular theme, say colors or two verbs. At the end of the lesson you are told how many answers you got right. If you get all the questions right you could advance onto a harder level.

You may think this sounds a bit simplistic but Rosetta Stone uses this method to quite an advanced level. It is more than just learning vocabulary and some fairly complicated sentences are also used as questions.

They use this same method for recognizing written words, practice writing and have a way to analyze your speech patterns to help improve your accent.

So as you go through a lesson set, you will learn vocabulary by simply matching the words you see or hear spoken to the pictures on the screen. To begin with, the answer may be given in a previous picture but in a slightly different context. So for example, an answer might be given that a man drinks water. Another question might then be posed about a woman drinking water. You will have seen the word for water and woman in previous questions/pictures and have to make the connection. In this way you learn and the deduction process can make the learning more interesting and fun to some extent.

The number of lessons is vast and will take you to an advanced level but you have to buy the complete set of 5 courses to get to this level.

Rocket Italian takes a slightly different approach.

Basically, Rocket Italian uses a combination of teaching methods in their course. I believe they  have looked at the successful elements of courses like Pimsleur/Michel Thomas and Rosetta Stone to give the student three distinct ways of learning.

So you get an audio course which is similar to the Pimsleur/Michel Thomas types of teaching. They have an interactive PDF course along the lines of a traditional book course. And they have 3 games that are similar to how Rosetta Stone works.

In terms of details, the audio course is 33 15-30 minute lessons. The lessons deal with basic Italian through to everyday situations like going shopping or talking to people at a birthday party.

The audio follows the narrator, a native English speaker and his native Italian speaking friend. The English speaker introduces the lesson and does the teaching by illustrating points and asking you questions. The Italian speaker speaks the Italian parts so that you get to hear an authentic accent. You are advised to say the words or sentences after her aloud.

The end of the lesson involves recapping what has been learned and then answering some questions posed by the narrator. You are given time to answer and then the Italian speaker gives the answer.

Clubbing Italiano Style

The second part of Rocket Italian is a PDF interactive course. This course has lessons from beginner through to intermediate/advanced levels. This is where you are taught grammar, shown how verbs are conjugated and introduced to new words. You will learn more about reading and writing in Italian. There are a number of questions at the end of each lesson to help you consolidate your learning. It is termed interactive because you can click an Italian word and you will hear audio of it spoken. This can help you with pronunciation if you say the word afterwards.

The Rocket Italian games are called MegaVocab, MegaAudio and MegaVerb. They work on the same principles as the Rosetta Stone method in that they use pictures and you have to answer a series of questions.

In the case of MegaVocab and MegaAudio, you have to guess which picture is correct after hearing the written or spoken Italian word. In MegaVerb, you are asked to type in the correct conjugation of a series of verbs in terms of the tense and person that is speaking.

There is also two sets of flashcards that you can print out and play with your friends.

If you get Rocket Italian you are given access to a forum where you can ask questions about the course or about the language. There are people there of varying levels of Italian and they can help you with your studies.

The Rocket Italian team will send follow up lessons to your email address occasionally.

Good points of Rosetta Stone Italian

Unique way of learning – no books or writing things down.

High quality images and generally professional looking system.

Track your progress through a scoring system.

A system that can analyze your speech (need your own headset/microphone though).

Bad points

There are 5 courses or levels which are separate products. So you have to buy all 5 if you want to use Rosetta Stone to an advanced level. This makes it quite expensive and most people only get the first level because of this reason.

With this said, I would say Rosetta Stone is not in direction competition with Rocket Italian and compared to similar products like Tell Me More and Fluenz Italian it is cheaper or similarly priced.

This approach has no formal instruction, particularly in grammar. It relies on repetition and consistency to work. Some people might not like this style of learning.

Good points of Rocket Italian course

Value for money.

You get an audio course that can be used separately from the other parts of the package. The pdf interactive course is also a course in itself, that teaches the finer points of the language and grammar. The games are helpful but not as comprehensive as Rosetta Stone. The forum and follow up emails with extra lessons are good to keep you motivated and develop a sense of community.

Bad points

The meaning of some of the images in the games are ambiguous so you need to use the show English word button from time to time. This kind of defeats the objective of the games because it makes it too easy.

>>> Go to the Rocket Italian website now <<<

>>> Get the Rosetta Stone Italian course here <<<

Michel Thomas Italian vs Rocket Italian

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The main aim of the Michel Thomas Italian course is to teach conversational skills. I really liked his teaching style and you finish the course with confidence that you can speak to an Italian speaking person.

The purpose of Rocket Italian is to teach reading, writing, comprehension and conversational skills. There is a large vocabulary set that can be learned through the games and exercises in the lessons. The exercises allow the student to practice writing.

Using the Michel Thomas course is easy. All you need is a cd or mp3 player. The course is completely on CD so you can listen to it anywhere and anytime that is convenient for you.

The best way to get Rocket Italian is either online or by downloading from the Internet. This is a unique feature for a language course. You can be using the course within minutes of purchase. The Rocket Italian program has an audio component, a PDF course and three games to practice vocabulary, comprehension and verb conjugation.

Michel Thomas Italian is designed for people wanting to learn Italian fast. So if you are going to Italy for a vacation or business and you need some basic conversational skills to get you by, then Michel Thomas Italian is a great choice. The teaching method that is used is that you act as the third student in his class. The other two students are on the recording. Michel Thomas does the teaching and explains concepts. The other students ask questions and answer questions that are posed by Michel Thomas. You are advised to answer these questions too by stopping the recording, answering out aloud and then restarting it to get the answer.

Rocket Italian is a more comprehensive language course. The aim of the course is to get a fully rounded Italian language education. It has sections that teach you to speak, listen, read and write.

Scene From An Italian Restaurant

The audio component of Rocket Italian is similar to Michel Thomas. It features a narrator and a native Italian speaker. The narrator does the teaching and asks questions. You are advised to stop the recording and answer the question out aloud. Then start the recording and the native Italian speaker gives the answer. By listening to the native speaker and mimicking the accent you can improve your pronunciation.

The pdf course is an interactive course that starts with the basics of the language and builds to real world situations. The interactive part of the course comes when you click on a word and the Italian audio is spoken. There are also tests at the end of each lesson that you can take to consolidate what you have learned.

Rocket Italian also has 3 language learning games and some flash cards that you can use as educational tools. They are good as a reference guide for Italian words and verbs. The games add a bit of fun and competition to the learning of Italian. They can also be used in between lessons if you need a break from concentrating on grammar or some other aspect of the language.

In summary, I think Michel Thomas Italian is a way to get conversational skills quickly. These are basic skills but they would help you ask for things and not be totally helpless when in Italy on vacation or business. I think Rocket Italian is a complete course that will take several months to go through. You would probably return to it afterwards as a reference resource. You will learn all the skills needed to speak a language using Rocket Italian.

>>> Go to the Rocket Italian website now <<<

>>> Get Michel Thomas Italian here <<<

Perfect Conjugation With MegaVerb

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Learning Italian grammar, like any language, can get a bit tedious after a while. Megaverb is a way to make learning grammar a bit more fun and even a bit easier. If you want to master any language you have to know verb conjugations without a second thought. Megaverb helps you do this.

Get conjugating !

MegaVerb starts by offering you the tense that you want to practice. You can select more than one tense if you feel confident. If you are just starting out then it is best to stick with one tense.

Once you have selected the tense/s you go to another screen that gives you the infinitive of the verb and the person that is conjugating the verb. Your task is to type in the correct verb and ending for that person. This is actually quite difficult, especially as you have to get the exact spelling correct. This includes accented characters.

You are asked 25 questions and given four attempts to type in the correct answer. At the end of the questions you are given a score. This score indicates your level of understanding and if you should go to the next level.

So you will learn how to spell a wide variety of verbs, including using accented characters. If you use it often, you will develop a good understanding of how a verb should look for a tense and person. By writing the verb and it’s ending you will develop an understanding of the correct verb conjugation. It beats learning it from a book and can be played as a break from the proper Italian lessons and audio in the Rocket Italian course.

For more details of MegaVerb and the complete course, visit the Rocket Italian website.

>>> Go to the Rocket Italian website now <<<