A regret of mine is that I didn't take advantage of a couple of years living and working in Italy to learn the language. I managed to grab hold of some vocabulary, particularly as it related to food, and I therefore generally ended up with what I thought I had ordered. Ever since then, I've had the desire, though not necessarily the will power or tools, to progress my skills to at least a reasonable conversational level. I've tried a number of books and software packages, but none seemed to be able to help me stay engaged or make real progress.
Well, like anyone who has opened a magazine in the last couple of years, I had seen innumerable ads for Rosetta Stone. I decided to give it another go and ordered the Italian Level One package. I quickly realized that it was working in a different way than the other programs and packages I had tried. When I would look at an object that had been featured in a lesson, I would think of the Italian term immediately, rather than consciously translate from English to Italian. For example, now when I see a ball, the image triggers the word palla to pop into my head.
With Rosetta Stone, as the site claims, 'you learn Italian the way you learned your own native language, without translation or memorization. Native speakers, real-life images, speech recognition and fully interactive software teach you like you learned your first language—naturally'. It is now the #1 language-learning software in the world and it is used by government agencies and corporations such as Deutsche Telekom, IBM and Lockheed Martin.
For anyone who wants to learn a bit of Italian prior to a trip to Italy, or would just like to explore learning a new language for pleasure of it, I recommend this program. In addition to Italian, they have more than 25 other languages from which to choose.
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