Rocket Italian Reviews

I found the first level excellent. Both presenters were extremely clear. I'm on to the intermediate course now though and finding it much tougher. It's the same female presenter and she's excellent, but the male presenter in this course is really difficult to understand, pronouncing words considerably differently from the original. They also leave way too little time to repeat the phrases in this one on the first attempt. The second seems to be ok. I've timed the first and in a lot of cases they leave less time than it took for them to say it, so hopeless for me as a beginner! A bit pricey, but overall it seems to be working.

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!

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.

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 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.

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.

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 am very pleased with the program. Very well organized and gives a variety of ways to practice and assess one's progress.

I am old enough to remember having to go to a language lab on campus and listen to the tapes there. Of course, nothing interactive available.

I had been studying Italian on my own using another product, but it didn't provide me with explanations about word usage, culture, or real conversational lessons with self-test practice that Rocket Language Italian does. I sensed I really wasn't learning the language. But with Rocket Language I can practice my pronunciation, check it against a native speaker, and even participate in conversations in which my voice is dubbed into the existing audio tapes done by the instructor. I just started using Rocket Languages, but I already know my pronunciation and confidence in using the language has improved. I am excited to find out how much more I can improve.

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.)