Italian Tuition Online

As before, this is an app where the author has built a series of language tests, and then published the same app for different languages, with different vocabulary.

However, despite this, they’ve also gone as far as recording an audio sample of each word, so that on any screen you can tap an icon to hear what it sounds like. This is a great feature, and the audio is also pretty professional – the lady’s accent is excellent, and quality is good. It’s something that requires at least some resources (ie. someone who speaks the language), so this is a more serious app than in the previous review.

The format is very familiar – it takes you through a series of word games, such as flashcards, match the pairs, and a hangman-style game – with the same vocab. However, the production quality is pretty good, and so you’re more likely to keep playing, and hence keep learning!

So – as a taster, the Light version is well worth downloading. But should you buy the full version for nearly £5? Well… if you find yourself actually using the Lite version, and learning – then why not? If you run it twice, then never touch it again, then perhaps you should find a more engaging method of learning.

This is the first app I tried, and after a few minutes, I was mortified….

The ‘Lite’ edition provides just a small dictionary of around 20 words, with the full-price version containing many dictionaries. However, even in the few words of the Lite version, there was a schoolboy error! Against Fa Caldo, the author had put the English Translation Cold !!  And of course, it’s not – it’s Warm !!

This is really a strange mistake, because any native Italian speaker – even anyone above beginner’s level, really – would never make such an error. Likewise, anyone with no knowledge of the language at all, creating it from a dictionary, would write the answers verbatim from the dictionary and still not make such an error! So it begs the question, who wrote the app?  The reviews do note some other errors, such as typos.

As for the app itself, it takes you through flash cards, and then a round of three different word-matching games, using 6-7 of the word pairs. It then does the same for the next 7 word-pairs, then the next 7. It is actually quite an effective method, but would get very boring, very quickly!

So – in short, boring, poorly-finished, and above all, flat wrong! I would definitely avoid this app, unless you wish to learn the ‘iPhone dialect’of Italian!

See a few snapshots, right – and see if you can match the words while you’re at it!

Although we’ve had iPhones and iPod Touches in our house for over a year now, it only recently occurred to me to check what resources there were for learning Italian. After all, there’s an app for almost anything, so why not Learning Languages?

Over the next few posts, I’ll cover various Apps that I’ve found on the iPhone, and how effective they are as learning aids.  As well as dedicated language Apps themselves, there are also other ways to learn Italian on your iPhone! How about listening to streaming Italian Radio? Reading Italian Papers, Press, or iPhone-friendly websites? Even listening to Italian music. They’re all ways of ‘applying’ your iPhone (literally, ‘Applications’) to help you learn Italian!