Customer Reviews

Learn Italian Now! 9.0

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

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.

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.

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.

I found Italian Now to be quite good for learning the Italian language. It gives you the ability to start almost anywhere making it ideal for beginners through experts. Being a beginner when I bought this program I started with the alphabet reference and a grammar tutorial. These were both very good features and after some practice they helped to lay a good foundation for further learning. From here there are endless things to do. This program does an excellent job of teaching vocabulary and useful phrases. Perhaps one of the best things this program does is working on your pronunciation. In several different activities I had to speak Italian into a microphone and it was compared to a native speaker's pronunciation which helps you to drastically improve your own pronunciation. I am more than satisfied with this program and I highly recomend it.

This is a great piece of software. I have seen a couple other language learning programs but none really like this one. It has been very effective at teaching me Italian. The content and methods of teaching are all very well done. Good software- easy to use, effective, good content- my suggestion is to use this if you want to learn Italian.

Italian NOW is wonderful. I used this program to try and learn to speak Italian for work. I found that this program was a very good educational software product. There are thousands and thousands of words and tons of conversation practices to learn from for numerous different situations. To practice vocabulary there are some really great games. One of the best aspects of the program was that it also has ways to work on your pronunciation (through a microhpone with a Pronunciation meter that matches it against native speaker's pronunciation). The program also makes great use of video and audio, and at times you almost feel like you are there speaking to someone in Italian. Good program and a good way to learn.

All of the interactive language software programs by Transparent Language are useful.

This Italian version is no exception. Over 10,000 words, see & hear native speakers of Italian on your computer, and one of the neatest features is the pronunciation analysis - with the ability to record yourself speaking to check for correct pronunciation & accent.

But if you buy it, make sure to the Deluxe Edition - the features really shine. It has enhanced video, bonus multilingual word processor, works with any version or Windows/Mac. Learn to speak, read, listen...through traditional exercises, games, creative tools, and more.

If you want to learn Italian, spend the extra money and spring for the Deluxe Edition.

The good side of this program is that you can click on each word separately to hear it pronounced slowly and then you can click on the entire sentence to hear it spoken at a normal speed.

After going through the section with some essential words and phrases, there is a leap to dialogues and also to the language which moves to intermediate / advanced level. If you already speak Italian, but your Italian got a little bit rusty, this may be a fun way to review it. If you're just beginning to learn Italian, this may be frustrating and you will need to supplement this program with other more solid books both related to language and grammar.

On a side note, Transparent Language has additional CDs as add-ons to this program, which as far as I know are only available through their website. Add-ons deal with different applications of language - for business, travel, entertainment, literature, etc. There is one CD from the entertainment section that is very funny to watch. The main benefit from getting this add-ons which contain TV shows (after all you can just go to Italian video store and rent Italian movies) is that you can click on each word separately to hear it slowly and as many times as you like and then listen to the sentence or the entire episode. It helps you to accustom yourself to understand the spoken language.

The single major flaw in this product is its lack of direction for the beginner. I purchased the Italian version to compare it to Rosetta Stone's method. The difference in price will tell you which is the better one. This product has good ideas (dialogs & memory games) but Rosetta Stone's approach is sound and well organized.

This product DOES have more resources than Rosetta Stone but they're left to the user to figure out how to utilize them when studying the lessons. For beginners this will lead to a lot of wasted time and frustration.

Stuffing the product with goodies does not make it better. They need to concentrate on the HOWTOs. Until such time this product is not very useful to beginners.

The user interface is so hard to follow it's unbelievable. You have to scan up the screen, then down to the right, then over to the left and track all of this while trying to learn vocabulary.

I bought this thinking that it was only $40 so how bad could it be...well it is BAD!

Buy the FSI courses or Rosetta Stone - they are much more expensive but worth the price, especially if LanguageNow is the alternative. I have French, Spanish, German, and Russian and each of them are fantastic. Of course they are two different methods of learning but both are effective in their own way. At the end of the day you need to go to the country where the language is spoken and spend some time to really learn a language...