A near beginner with good knowledge of French, who can understand Italian TV (more or less), who boasts knowing 200 words in Italian -- uno, due, tre...cento novanta nove, duecento (that's a joke, but almost accurate)-- who wants to brush up on his oral skills before a trip to Italy, but only having time in his car to and from work (total 1 hour per day) to listen to CDs and do the input-repeat-input-respond thing, cannot decide what course to choose, not wanting to invest too much money in this ordeal, and SEEKS the advice of former slow travelers: Pimsleur ("Basic" 5 CD course), or Rosetta Stone? Qualcos'altro? Grazie mille.

I found this comparison comparison.


Pimsleur seems to be a little cheaper than RS.

Since your time learning will be in the car, I recommend Pimsleur. I have used the P cd's and found them excellent. You can easily go at whatever pace suits you and repeating a lesson is simple to accomplish. Also, buy a simple beginners lesson book. HERE is a web site you will find useful.

After studying Italian for years, I had the opportunity to view the RS computer version, and did not like the approach in the beginning lessons (I did not see the later, advanced lessons).

I don't know how you could use the Rosetta Stone in your car. The lessons I have seen require you to look at the pictures. I don't think RS is nearly as good as Pimsleur for conversation either. Our library has both, but I didn't care much for the Rosetta Stone. The only problem with Pimsleur is that there is no written version, so you need to have a basic understanding of the spelling of the words. At least Italian is phonetic -- easier in that regard than French.

People learn in different ways. So what works best for one, may not be best for someone else. I've used both and prefer Pimsleur. Particularly for use in the car. I've actually done all of Pimsleur 1 and 2 and have just started on Italian 3.

I had asked about the Tell Me More Italian premium software and so far hadn't found any reviews on ST. This was a consumer report I had found and I am about to take a chance purchase it.
http://learn-italian-software-review.toptenreviews.com/...-italian-review.html

Plus, Pimsleur is sometimes available at the library (at least it was for me, here in Los Angeles). Just Italian 1, though.

beth

Karinka - please let us know what you think once you try it. I'll be done with Pimsleur in a few weeks and ready to try something else.

Normandy - ebay has lots of language material available. Assuming it doesn't violate copyright laws you could presumably buy something and resell it to recoup most of your investment when you are done with it.

I would think that it would violate some law to pass the programs arounds especially for $$. One of the services with the Premier version of Tell me More (10 levels) is 24/7 toll free assistance which I doubt would transfer to another user. I'm waiting to hear back from them if I purchase the program in Vista format will I also be able to use it on my XP 2002 computer here at work. I want to be able to do a 45 minute "lesson" each day during my lunch break and have it in my home computer as well. The 10 level version is under $400, $365 I think. Quite an investment but hopefully will be all I ever need!

I think a while back I mentioned this website as a possible source for discounted Pimsleur products. Here's another one. The latter might also have some kind of buy back program. There used to be one at cheappimsleur.com, but I don't know if they do that any more.

I just noticed yesterday that Pimsleur products are now available on audible.com (which I think is being bought out by Amazon.) If you join Audible the prices are sort of reasonable. I haven't used Pimsleur so don't know about the program, just saw the lower prices.

I just finished the Pimsleur mini course on Brazilian Portuguese so I figured I would write about my experiences with it. I really liked the fact that it is all CDs. I thought I wouldn’t, as I am a very visual person, but it actually worked and made me focus on pronunciation, which in Portuguese can be kind of hard. I also liked that I could listen to it while driving, cleaning, walking… I did find it really slow, though, in 8 sessions I felt I didn’t get very far at all. (Although I can pronounce the few things I know really well!) I guess that is why the big Pimsleur courses are so big and expensive, because they have soooo many CDs to go through.

In short, I really liked the oral only approach but felt that progression was a bit slow.

Rosetta Stone is extremely unhelpful. I did the online french version and the voice recognition software constantly malfunctioned and the head set did not work properly. I am not a computer genius, but I know a product should not function like this. Also, I wanted to learn more about writing in french and Rosetta Stone is not a good source for grammar. The program is difficult to follow if your goal is composition. In addition, Rosetta Stone will automatically renew an online subscription (even though the company does not list it in the contract) and be unavailable for you to cancel the subscription via phone or email.