Rocket Italian Reviews

This has been a very busy time for me so I have not been able to devote 1 hour a day consistently yet. I will try to now and hopefully will
regain more confidence in this language which I've loved and used in the past. ( But not for some years)
I would like time to write
on my own paper words ( and the phonetic pronunciation of them ) when learning conversation which will be useful. I think you're doing a great job at letting us hear the Italian speaker and also the American speaker use the Italian.

What I find is that when I stay with the part where I am doing a lot of speaking and have been for a good amount of time, that I start tripping
over the speech and have to stop because my mouth gets dry. I guess this just means to pace myself more.
Your program is great, and I will get to work with it right now!

Overall Rocket Italian is a pretty good system. You get exposed to the language in a variety of ways and have some explanation as to why a particular pattern exists.

It does have the problem that there is only one correct answer for each thing. This of course ignores the fact that many things can be said in slightly different ways. As an example the phrase "She is angry" technically can be said as either "Lei è arrabbiata" OR "È arrabbiata" however the only accepted answer is "È arrabbiata". In other places an answer is only accepted if it has a he/she indicator.

There are also numerous places where the English phrase refers to you plural but for some strange reason they have not realized that _every_ place they do that needs some kind of indicator that they mean you plural rather than you singular since English only has 'you'.

Overall the issues with Rocket Italian aren't that big but they make it feel more like you are memorizing lines in another language rather than learning another language. The dialogues are the worst for this as they slowly take away more of the words you are supposed to say but you have to say the phrase word for word to get it right even though there are times when you could get the same meaning across with slightly different words. (They really should package the dialogue portion so that it can be used by actors memorizing lines as that is what it does.)

it would be nicer if the voice adjustment meter was still part of the program lessons (it helps out a lot, in correcting individual pronunciation): it was perfect with my studies at the University of Florence during 2012. I was able to interact with the people of Florence because of the tools that rocket language provided. Plus, pass all of the tests that was only in the Italian dialogue. Thanks

I have tried every audio software and physical classes to learn languages; Rocket is the first course I have actually enjoyed and stuck to! The content is very in depth and engaging; I particularly like how they explain how the language works culturally. As I am living in Italy I found this very useful. It is the most interactive software and the various tool really make you feel like you are making progress while making it easy to memorise.

I use this in conjunction with Babbel and find the two very complementary.
Babbel is better with disciplining me to learn verb conjugations and tenses and Rocket Italian is great for driving improved hearing, reading and pronunciation.

I have liked the program so far but here are my main criticisms:
First, the pacing. I wouldn't say I like having 5 audio lessons consecutively and then 5 language and culture lessons in a row. I prefer to have one audio and one language and culture lesson each time. I also wish these two types of lessons were more related and interconnected. they seem so disjointed and irrelevant right now.
I also wish that there was some sort of spaced repetition feature for reviewing previously learned vocabulary and materials. Therefore I have to manually make flashcards in another program (Anki) for this which is a little cumbersome than having them readily available.
I would like to see some new features for exercising the learned vocabulary and grammar instead of just repeating the limited number of sentences in each lesson and requiring the students to form and come up with new sentences.

Overall this is a very good program.
*I compare this with DuoLingo online learning as well as a personal coach I use with Verbling. Also against Babble
which I used for 6 months.
*Price is kind of high but it is for a complete program so I'm neutral on this rating.
*Lessons are interesting. I could use less of the banter but still, very good content when focused on actual language
skills. Of great importance to me are the moderators speaking in a clear and moderate speed. Rocket delivers on
this!
* Now to my most concerning (to me) knock...Some of the exercises are terribly long in the Language and Cultural
sections. It's not uncommon to have 50, 60 or greater than 70 words, phrases or sentences to learn, memorize and
recite back. Personally, I get very frustrated when i fail due to sheer volume of material. Knowing how difficult and
frustrating these exercises are, I have to fight the urge to simply by-pass these sections. Reducing the volume within
Language and Cultural modules would be a huge plus for me.

Despite having studied Italian for years, I am still uncomfortable trying to actually speak the language. With Rocket lessons I have gone back to the beginning and am nicely closing up some of the holes in my knowledge of the language. I am hoping to soon become more at ease with with Italian and more willing to actually test the skills that I am clearly acquiring with my Rocket Languages course.

The Rocket Italian Premium level is great for learning basic travel phrases. The voice recognition software works very well and if you use all the tools they provide for you regularly you'll definitely feel comfortable pulling out Italian phrases when you need them. I do like to listen to the audio lessons several times though. Also I with there was more variety in the testing and practice. An exercise where the student is given a completely new sentence that they have to give back in Italian would be really helpful.

For the price this is a very good program and the interactive sections are easy to understand. I've used other online programs and so far this one is the best. My main dissatisfaction with it has to do with the organization of the information presented. After the self study sections it would make sense to use the new vocabulary and/or concepts presented during the interactive lessons. For example: There's an entire lesson dealing with the weather but no where in the succeeding interactive lessons is there any discussion of weather. When vocabulary is not used, it's easily forgotten. And you end up with little sense of how to include it in conversation. Also, when new grammatical concepts are introduced in the interactive lessons there isn't always a discussion of the concept. Examples: (1) Nel, nella, negli are presented in unit 4. It's a completely new group of prepositional phrases, but there's no explanation. (2) When nouns ending in E are pluralized, the ending is always i (as in the masculine) regardless of whether the noun is masculine or feminine. I purchased an Italian grammar book and was able to clear up my confusion around this, but it should have been mentioned in one of the lessons where a plural feminine noun ended in an i. These are just the most recent issues of this kind I've encountered. There are more. So, more thought regarding organization and presentation would be warranted.