Talk Now! Italian, by Eurotalk, tries to improve the experience of learning Italian by creating a game out of the process. There are many colorful activities with audio clips for all words and phrases, which helps both vocabulary and listening comprehension.

Unfortunately, Talk Now! Italian will never be able to teach more than vocabulary. It serves the same basic function as a flashcard program, although it is much more visually stimulating than most other flashcard programs. Users can participate in various activities that generally involve identifying the right word based on an audio clue. Users can choose from animated or video guides to accompany them through the activities, though these guides serve more as a repetitive annoyance rather than a real help. They simply repeat encouragement over and over again.

One of the most useful elements of Talk Now! Italian is the recording room. While it can’t give feedback on your accent like speech recognition software, it does allow you to record your voice and compare it to native speakers. This helps to improve pronunciation if done consistently.

Talk Now! Italian cannot teach fluent Italian, but it may be a good addition to an Italian language curriculum or class because it will improve vocabulary retention. However, we cannot recommend it as a complete Learn Italian program because there are so many other programs that do a more thorough job in a similar price range.