Learn Italian Now! 9.0

by Transparent Language

Product Features

• Over 15,000 Words Hundreds of Useful Phrases Full Motion "Big Picture" Video
• Full Native Speaker Pronunciation SlowSound to Hear Every Nuance Advanced Pronunciation Practice
• Integrated BYKI Vocabulary Software MP3 Audio for iPods or other players
• Record, Playback and Compare Alphabet Reference & Grammar Tutorial Conversation Practice
• Personal BYKI list creation (with sound) from 15,000 words Interactive Games Video Unscramble

Product Details

• Shipping Weight: 6.4 ounces
• Shipping: This item is also available for shipping to select countries outside the U.S.
• ASIN: B00005Y3VD
• Item model number: 744573055080
• Date first available at Amazon.com: April 4, 2002
• Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (12 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #5,153 in Software (See Top 100 in Software)
  • #17 in Software > Education & Reference > Foreign Languages > Italian
• Discontinued by manufacturer: Yes

Product Description

Amazon.com Review

With the modern PC having a variety of possibilities of which traditional language-learning methods could only dream--voice recognition, video dialogues, and so on--the past few years have seen an extraordinary boom in language-learning software packages. However, as picking through this surfeit can be tricky, it is important to find a reliable brand, and the Learn Now! series is definitely among the best software packages.

The program comes equipped with 2 CDs, one of which has various key sections--useful "survival phrases", fun activities, conversations, and practicing speech against the voice of a native speaker--while the other has a thorough grammar tutorial. This combination is certainly a valuable one for people who are serious about learning a language, and the product is clear and easy to use: in role-plays, phrases are highlighted in a box and their English translations placed underneath, while the voice recognition software allows you to measure your own voice against that of a native speaker, and the games hone the things that have been learnt. Sections are tailored to various activities, such as getting around, going out, and business situations, while at any point you can call up a grammar tutorial which explains a particular point on which you are unsure.

In addition to these sections, the part on survival phrases will be of much use to those who have already reached a basic level. There are several practice dialogues based around commonplace situations--in the hotel, the bar, the airport, etc. Although some of the advice borders on the infantile ("When you decide to travel outside the USA, you will probably need a passport"), much of it is useful, and rounds out what is a well composed package for someone starting out on the road to using the language overseas. --Toby Green, Amazon.co.uk

Product Description

Learn From Exciting Content and Interactive Activities - Learn Italian Now! is a revolutionary language-learning tool based on the proven Transparent Method of learning how to use a language in context through rich multimedia activities. Learn Italian Now! unites industry-leading tools with authentic, native multimedia content to make learning fast, fun, and effective. Big Video Screen - Just select one of the interesting articles or stories and click to explore the Italian language. View Italian language videos complete with the sites and sounds of real people speaking and interacting in Italian. Or jump directly into exciting interactive games, pronunciation-improving practice or invigorating conversations. Determine your own learning pace by deciding when you need translation-and when you don't. All the tools you need to quickly master a language are instantly available in Learn Italian Now! Interactive Conversational Practice - Practice your lines using the prompts and the integrated speech features, then record your voice and replay the whole conversation with the lines you've recorded. It's a terrific way to get valuable real-world experience using your new language. In no time, you'll be conditioned to respond correctly without thinking about it, just like you do in English. Before You Know It - The revolutionary software that teaches you words and phrases so you know them cold - with Perfect Recall - is now integrated right into Learn Italian Now! You get: * Quick launch of BYKI from within Learn Italian Now! * Companion BYKI lists to use with immersion content * Dozens of bonus lists from BYKI Deluxe * The ability to create custom BYKI lists (complete with native speaker sound) from any of the 15,000 words in Learn Language Now! MP3 Learning on Your iPod or Other Player - Learn language Now! comes with dozens of BYKI Pod Audio MP3 files. Now you can practice your language wherever you take your MP3 player.

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

68 of 72 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Eh, good if you get them cheap, July 9, 2004

By 

J A W (Norman, OK United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Learn Italian Now! 9.0 (CD-ROM)

You will NOT learn a foreign language by one of these programs. The vocab is way too limited, and neither the Version 8 series nor the Version 9 series addresses past or future tenses substantively. I have purchased six of these over the past couple of years, four Version 8 (German, Irish, Latin, Hebrew) the other two Version 9 (Spanish, Italian), and for some idiotic reason, the Version 8s are SUPERIOR to the upgrades. The Version 8s have more texts and thus more variety. LatinNow Version 8 is probably the best program I have seen from this company, good texts of various grade levels, plus you can fresh up on your Roman mythology!

These "tapes", and that is basically what they are, computerized language tapes, are only going to be useful if you plan on dedicating time for rote memorization of grammar and vocab outside of the program. These programs can be good to help supplement textbook study, as we need to hear the language and grammar for it to sink in. If you think any one of these programs in and of itself is going to make you fluent, you're very sadly mistaken. I would recommend finding them cheap and working on them while you eat breakfast, then spending 15+ minutes a day per language w/ grammar, vocab, writing (ie thinking w/in the language), out of a textbook. That way you can cover your bases, if you are the self-guided student looking to master a new language to get a head start on college credit or to learn it just for the heck of it.

Also, the Hebrew keyboard layout is atrocious and barely functional. I assume this might be a problem w/ all non-Latin/Germanic alphabets, like Chinese and Russian. This makes the games worthless--and the games are probably the best part of the program.

51 of 58 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Excellent lessons - Mac users beware, July 13, 2002

By 

Flunk "a_dg" (Longmont, CO United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Learn Italian Now! 9.0 (CD-ROM)

This suite of software is very easy to use. You can listen to conversations, participate in conversations, slow things down to hear pronunciation more clearly, etc etc. Loaded with features that I don't use, because even just the basic feature set is enough to get you going.

However, Mac users beware. This is *not* version 9; it's version 8.1. Transparent Language used to have a big notice about the differences between Mac and Windows versions for this release, but that notice seems to have disappeared, so I thought that this was finally the *real* version 9. Not so. Granted, it does run natively on OS X now, which was worth the purchase to me, but does not have the new features of version 9 for Windows.

Overall very good product. I can't go into too much detail about the features, because I haven't needed them; the software does a good job without complicating things, but offers extra features for those that will use them.

12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Great for Learning Italian, May 30, 2003

By 

Jen Daniels (Providence, RI USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Learn Italian Now! 9.0 (CD-ROM)

I used this program for some time before a trip to Italy and it sucessfully taught me how to speak basic Italian pretty easily. I found the situational dialogues very useful in learning for my trip. They taught such things as how to order in a restuarant, get a hotel room, how to ask for directions ect. Italian Now has the ability to teach pronunciation with its adequete audio features. After my trip to Italy I continued to use the program and learned quite a bit more from it. This program is quite good for learning Italian even if its just for a trip or for learning another language in its entirety.