Tag Archives: Rocket Italian Learning Lounge

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

Posted on by
Reply

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 >>>

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

Posted on by
Reply

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 <<<