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.

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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.

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