Customer Reviews

Instant Immersion Italian Deluxe v3.0

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I've been working with this program for three weeks now, and I have yet to learn anything.

There are no instructions about how to proceed with the lessons, and I was for a long time under the impression that the instruction would be on the CD-ROMs, with practice on the "bonus" audio CDs, and learning in context on the "interactive" DVD and the game. In fact, this is all wrong. There is no instruction on the CD-ROMs, merely short quizzes, word searches, etc.

The heart of this program is the 5 audio CDs. But the CDs don't take up the topics in the same order as the CD-ROM exercises. For a couple of weeks, I struggled with the audio CDs, which I found difficult without a written transcript. But then I found that the company had posted a complete transcript, which helped a great deal. But the transcript is more than complete: it is for 8 CDs, and there are only 5 in the set. I really miss the material that is on discs 6, 7, & 8.

Furthermore, the scoring on the evaluations is odd -- sometimes it is based on 4 exercises, but there are only two provided. So the best score you can get is 50%, even if all of your answers are correct.

I had no technical trouble at all with the program CD-ROMs. The "hidden keys" are odd, but no problem (why hide them?). But my computer (a new Dell Inspiron 1720 with Vista) has had many problems with the "interactive" DVD and the game. The game freezes up at the same point every time I play it, and the arrow keys seem to go dead on the video. Amazon says this program is for Vista, but on the help instructions for the game (the only place I can find a list), Windows 2000 and XP are listed, but not Vista. I can't get the game past the police interview, and I have found the "interactive" video almost impossible to use.

There are many little glitches not worth mentioning (e.g. "Stai calma" on transcript page 17 cannot mean "I remain calm"; it has to be "You (informal) are calm" or maybe "Stay calm"). But I won't go through all of them. I cannot believe that millions of people have learned Italian with this program, which seems to me a disorganized mess. I learned far more from the Danesi paperback. I wanted something with more interaction and context, but this isn't it.

I really thought that this would be a good program. I read a review from somewhere on the internet that compared this software very favorably to Rosetta Stone. At only a tenth the cost how bad could it be?

Well, let me tell you. First of all, there are no instructions for this program or how to use it. It is very difficult to navigate from one lesson to the next. And the most annoying thing for me was how the program is not fully loaded on your computer. Every time you answer a question or want to go to the next page, it has to load up off of the cd. This is a real pain when you are just going over some vocabulary and you want to go from screen to screen quickly.

Another thing I thought was odd, the total immersion portion of the vocabulary only included 96 words. Uh, I think I may need to know more words than that. The audio cds were very substandard and slow. I agree with the other poster when he talks about all the lip smacking and mouth noises. Get these people a glass of water or something. Also the game included does not work properly.

I am now learning Italian from these sources, the free "Before You Know It" flashcard program you can download off of the internet (did I mention its free), the "Italian Now" workbook, and some Pimsleur cds I checked out from the Library. If there was a class that would fit my schedule I would take one of those, but nothing beats learning lots of vocabulary and hearing some native speakers.

I honestly do not know how anyone can use this software without going crazy. I hope this is helpful to anyone.