| ![Italian Level 1 & 2 Win/Mac Personal Edition [Old Version]](http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51JJWQB9ZRL.jpg) | From: Fairfield Language Technologies
This item is no longer available
Rating:  26 reviews
Sales Rank: 3276
Format: CD-ROM
Platforms: Mac OS X, Windows, Mac, Windows XP, Windows 2000, Windows Me
Media: CD-ROM
Operating System: Windows
Shipping Weight (lbs): 2.1
Dimensions (in): 9.7 x 8.3 x 3
MPN: 794678018152
Model: 230-12
UPC: 794678018152
EAN: 0794678018152
ASIN: B000077DD4
Release Date: October 28, 2002
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| Customer Reviews:
Showing reviews 21-25 of 26
 This makes learning a new language painless December 13, 2005
Darren Burton (Ogden, Utah United States)
42 out of 45 found this review helpful
This program is amazing. I was at a friends house and tried the demo CD. I have never taken any classes or tried to learn Italian before, but I had learned 50 words within 2 1/2 hours and it was a fun process! I did take 3 years of Spanish in junior high and found it to be a very frustrating process, because the way languages are taught in public schools is so artifical. This program teaches you a language just like you learned English. By showing you something and telling you what it is called. You are shown 4 pictures, the name for the object for the picture, and each box is highlighted as the word is said. Then you are quized as the pictures are shown in different sequences and the word is shown with the picture - so you automaticly start to learn to spell the word, and associate the word with the sound.
Then after you learn about 16 basic words like cat, dog, man, woman, girl, boy, teenager, adult, you are taught verbs. You are shown 4 pictures again with a man running, a woman running, a boy running, and a girl walking. Since you now know the words for man,woman,boy, and girl you automatically know the new words mean running and walking. Then you are introduced to the pural forms - you are shown pictures of two girls running, one girl running, one boy walking, and two boys walking. So you are learning to recognize the words running and walking, and learning the feminine and masculine forms of the singular and plural words at the same time. What is so amazing about this program is that you are learning the grammar painlessly - which is the thing that is so painful about learning any foreign language. All the while you continue to associate the words with the sounds. The complexity slowly builds as your vocabulary base rapidly builds up. The demo CD takes you through the first two lessons of level 1 - about 6 hours of training. The software keeps track of where you left off and keeps track of your mistakes, re-quizing you over and over until it knows you know the words and just haven't made lucky guesses. I can't wait until I can save enough money to buy the full program and be ready to understand Italian for my next trip to Italy!
Easy Italian October 6, 2005
D. Voigt
29 out of 30 found this review helpful
My husband and I have been taking Italian for several months and were looking for something we could do at home that would enhance our classroom experience. The Rosetta Stone program is so much more than we ever expected. We easily spend an hour or two a day studying Italian. We wouldn't give up our live Italian instructor, but this program easily leads us through building language skills in a way that nothing else we've ever tried could. We also love the various ways of teaching, hearing, seeing, writing, reading, virtually all of the ways you need to learn any language. Since we're going to be permanently relocating to Italy next year, it's important for us to learn the language as quickly and efficiently as possible. Rosetta Stone provides all of the tools we need to do that.
 Great but will not stand alone November 23, 2004
M. Pizzullo (Trenton NJ)
373 out of 377 found this review helpful
I haven't gotten that far in it but I'm far enough to see the strengths and weaknesses. On the plus side, what I did learn is really well ingrained. The picture/word association really works - I find when I see something in my daily life that I have seen in the rosetta stone program, the italian word just pops into my head on it's own. There is no "translation" process like you ordinarily go through with language tapes. On the downside, anything that does not show well in a photograph doesn't fit the mechanics of the course. Words like "who, what, where, why, how" greetings "hello, goodbye" abstract nouns like "love, wisdom, pain, happiness, etc) subjective adjectives like "pretty, kind, cold, risky, etc.)and many verbs like "to know, think, want, wish, prefer, etc" and relative modifiers (more, most, least, -er, -est) are important parts of daily conversation and just don't fit the image/word association method. I think this is barrier to total fluency by the rosetta stone method. However, it's a great vocabulary builder, boasting 40,000 words by completion of the course. Not all the words will be useful in coversation, for example the word given for a car is L'autimobile when the common usage word is maccina. Both are correct, but it's like saying automobile instead of car in america. It's also great for reading skills, which is something not everyone is interested in but most cd courses are weak in if you want that. Language mechanics are not explained at all at any time. It's worth the money and an excellent supplement to other courses but will not stand alone, especially if you want tourist italian. If you actually want a full command of the language it's indispensible.
As to other courses to use this along with, Pimsleur is also expensive but worth every penny. The two go great together and each succeeds where the other fails. Pimsleur is entirely verbal, with almost no written material (brief reading exercises, nothing to write home about) and is better suited to tourists. It works much harder on accent and speaking skills, and an english speaker explains nuances of the language in english, so you can understand it. It has a limited vocabulary but succeeds at giving you a grasp of how to form sentences and actually use the language creatively.
Both Pimsleur and Rosetta Stone suffer from the lack of explanatory text and for this I'd recommend Ultimate Italian by living language. Each of the two volumes contain a 450 page textbook to fill in whatever gaps you have left after Pimsleur and Rosetta Stone get done with you. The included CD's can't hurt, but if you bought the whole pimsleur and both rosetta stones like I did, you're now into it for over 1000 dollars, and can save about 80 bucks by buying just the books. You really wont need the CD's if you already have Pimlseur and Rosetta stone. That money is better spent on a good dictionary, phrasebook and guide to slang and colloquialisms. I recommend Street Italian and webster's.
If you buy all this, expect to drop about 1200 bucks on everything. That's about the tuition and textbook for two semesters at community college but you'll have alot more to work with if you do it this way. You get out of it what you put into it, but don't expect to actually be speaking italian from a 101/102 class. Unless you're applying those credits towards a degree college classes are basically a waste of time and money for purposes of learning to speak the language.
Helpful for Learing Italian October 29, 2004
Laura De Giorgio (Canada)
96 out of 98 found this review helpful
This will not work for you as the first or only program for learning Italian. It is great as a supplement to other methods of learning Italian. The method is entirely intuitive - there is no English anywhere, so you may also want to have a dictionary and a grammar book.
I have found Rosetta Stone language programs most useful for reviewing the information I have learned elsewhere, for brushing up on languages I haven't used for a while, and for expanding vocabulary.
It may not be the best choice for total beginners, but you can learn a lot by associating words and expressions with the images and occasional mini videos. I do consider it definitely a worthwhile purchase.
This is a good start April 21, 2004
ArtHarrison (CA United States)
62 out of 64 found this review helpful
I have completed both level 1 and level 2 and I have learned quite alot, but, I cannot yet claim that I speak or write the Italian language fluently. This is a good course, and worth the money if you are very serious about learning Italian, but it is only a good beginning. It will not teach you much about verb conjugation or how to build a proper Italian sentence. Italian is a tough language to learn for the English speaker and it requires a huge amount of study, and many different types of study sources. This course is probably the best of its type available, but as with all of them it can only take you so far.
Showing reviews 21-25 of 26
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