Instant Immersion Italian Reviewer's Comments

Instant Immersion Italian Deluxe, by TOPICS Entertainment, is our "TopTenREVIEWS Bronze Award" winner. Instant Immersion is actually the same program as the #1 product, Tell Me More Italian, but has been repackaged with an audio language course and an interactive game that is played in Italian. It may seem that Instant Immersion should have been first because of these additional features, but Instant Immersion doesn’t have one of the most important features from its parent program: online testing and online chat with native speakers.

Instant Immersion enjoys the same broad array of features and teaching tools though. There is likely to be a learning path for anybody because the curriculum is so customizable. And the speech recognition system is remarkably effective at teaching and improving pronunciation.

Another problem that kept Instant Immersion from the top is the customer support. TOPICS Entertainment has one of the worst systems for answering questions and getting technical help. But despite these problems, Instant Immersion is a great product that gives a wide variety of tools and features to help you learn every aspect of Italian.

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Features:  

Instant Immersion is highly customizable, with three different learning modes that allow you to choose how you learn and what skills you focus on. This makes the program a good choice for anybody regardless of learning style. The audio lessons also allow you to take your learning on the road with an MP3 player or other mobile device.

This program has one of the best progress tracking features of any Learn Italian program. It’s easy to see scores for individual exercises and identify where you are weakest.

Fundamentals:  

There are a lot of ways to cover the fundamentals in Instant Immersion. The basics are involved in different activities and audio files help with listening comprehension. The speech recognition system offers one of the best pronunciation guides in the industry. The potential for conversation practice is drastically reduced because Instant Immersion doesn’t have the online chat option that Tell Me More has, but the program still has effective ways to practice conversation.

Ease of Use:  

Instant Immersion isn’t necessarily the easiest program to use. Included audio lessons and games create the need for a lot of disc swapping, and the navigation system in the main program can be confusing. Some of the buttons are nearly transparent most of the time so it’s difficult to even know they are there. It’s also difficult to navigate between activities and menus, but once you are there the activities are simple to navigate.

Teaching Tools:  

There are a wide range of tools to use in Instant Immersion. Images, audio and video form the foundation of teaching, but the speech recognition system becomes incredibly important for practicing accent and pronunciation. The program also enjoys one of the best culture lesson modules of any program we reviewed. We were extremely disappointed that Instant Immersion did not inherit the ability to offer online testing and online chat with a native speaker, like Tell Me More has.

Word Tools:  

Instant Immersion has glossaries and grammar texts that are a useful reference. You can also use a translator tool to translate words in the middle of activities.

Tech Support:  

TOPICS Entertainment provides horrible customer support in comparison to some of the other companies we reviewed. There is no common FAQ, just a database of disjointed documents. And the database isn’t easily searchable either, requiring you to log a question or problem before being directed to a list of docs that might help. There is also email support, but we found the customer support representatives to be slow to respond and not very knowledgeable.

Summary:  

Instant Immersion Italian Deluxe is the best-priced alternative for either of our top products-giving you maximum features for a minimum price.