iSpeak Italian / Language Blogs Competition
The iSpeak Italian course is a pretty good introduction to tourist language for travelers designed for the iPod. The dialogs are (relatively) realistic, the vocabulary covered is fairly good and the grammar presentations are short and practical, focusing on communication objectives. That said, this feels a lot like a Hippocrene or Teach Yourself course transfered to the iPod, rather than something stunningly new and different. This is particularly the case with a regular exercise in which you play the role of one of the characters from an earlier dialog - as conceived it tests your memory of the dialog more than it prompts you to speak naturally in Italian. More innovative is the final section of each lesson, in which you are given a phrase to complete and a picture of what you are to say comes up on the screen. This duplicates the old workbook activities where you use the right words to describe what's in the picture, but it works because of its immediacy and because you are supplying an oral, rather than written, answer.
The best thing about the course is its potential. With the content available, there's a lot of room for making playlists to cycle through. To their credit, the manual includes some tips for the types of playlists you might want to make. This leads to the question, why didn't they create them in the first place? For example, rather than simply telling you that you could make a playlist with all the fill-in-the-blank picture exercises, they could have created a playlist called "Final Exam." With a few built- in playlists ("Mid-term Exam," "Final Exam," "Mid-term Vocabulary Review," for example) they could have created a fair amount more value while giving users a chance to think about what kind of playlist they'd like based on their experience with the included offerings. Still, not bad for twenty bucks. If you want to learn a little Italian before your trip, but you're not the sort to sit with a textbook, skip the TY course and make a point of listening to this whenever you can.
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Lexiophiles is having a contest to determine the top language blogs for 2009. This blog is nominated in the Language Learning Category. For those who are curious, here's a little info, cut and pasted from a comment they left about it:
"Voting will start on July 8, leaving you enough time to prepare your readers for the upcoming voting. Voting will close on July 27 and the winners will be announced on July 30.
"For more information on the 2009 competition and what it is all about visit [http://www.lexiophiles.com/english/top-100-language-blogs-2009-nomination-started]
So now you may ask yourself what you can do. Here are some suggestions
"-Nominations are open until July 6, so feel free to share any blog you like with us."
The best thing about the course is its potential. With the content available, there's a lot of room for making playlists to cycle through. To their credit, the manual includes some tips for the types of playlists you might want to make. This leads to the question, why didn't they create them in the first place? For example, rather than simply telling you that you could make a playlist with all the fill-in-the-blank picture exercises, they could have created a playlist called "Final Exam." With a few built- in playlists ("Mid-term Exam," "Final Exam," "Mid-term Vocabulary Review," for example) they could have created a fair amount more value while giving users a chance to think about what kind of playlist they'd like based on their experience with the included offerings. Still, not bad for twenty bucks. If you want to learn a little Italian before your trip, but you're not the sort to sit with a textbook, skip the TY course and make a point of listening to this whenever you can.
***
Lexiophiles is having a contest to determine the top language blogs for 2009. This blog is nominated in the Language Learning Category. For those who are curious, here's a little info, cut and pasted from a comment they left about it:
"Voting will start on July 8, leaving you enough time to prepare your readers for the upcoming voting. Voting will close on July 27 and the winners will be announced on July 30.
"For more information on the 2009 competition and what it is all about visit [http://www.lexiophiles.com/english/top-100-language-blogs-2009-nomination-started]
So now you may ask yourself what you can do. Here are some suggestions
"-Nominations are open until July 6, so feel free to share any blog you like with us."
3 Comments:
I found your blog through the competition posts. Best of luck you in the weeks ahead.
Hey this "ispeak Italian" course is very impressive, I have visited the blog and I appreciate your knowledge about Italian language but let me know is this course specially designed for Tourist?
Kenny,
Thanks for the kind wishes.
Italian Learner,
The iSpeak Beginner course is for tourists. If you're looking for something for, there's a program called iLearn that incorporates the content of the Learn in Your Car program into audiovisual flashcards. I haven't tried it, though, so can't speak for how good it is in practice. If you're an advanced learner, the smart thing to do would be to check out YouTube for clips from Italian movies (you can download the clips with keepvid.com and use the Free iPod Video Converter to put them on your iPod so you can watch and listen on the go). Best of luck with it!
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