My Story I have been working through the program for about 3 months. I have found it very user friendly and appropriate for my level (beginner). I enjoy the interactive approach. I plan to visit Mexico again in the relatively near future and hope by then to be able to make myself understood in most everyday activities.

Did not work well in China online I tried to use Learn Mandarin in China, specifically Qindao and had both performance problems and an inability to set it up to learn Chinese characters. Now that I'm back in the US, I'll try again, but it was sure a let down not to be able to use the learning while I was in China for 2 months.

Great, real world language learning tool I had thought about purchasing other language "learn at your own pace" software for Italian for a few years. I finally decided to go ahead and buy one and stumbled upon Fluenz. I had never heard of it prior to this and was about to buy Rosetta Stone since I had their free demo. Fluenz, had a different approach, however, which was to teach conversational Italian - words, phrases, etc. which would be used in the real world. All the lessons are presented in an interesting way with explanations of why words and phrases are used. I decided I'd buy it and I'm extremely pleased with the teaching approach. It teaches you the language in a way you can use almost immediately with phrases which you will use on a trip to Italy - what you learn is everyday speaking. Definitely would recommend!

Great experience compared to Rosetta Stone I have tried both programs and I found Fluenz to be the best by far to teach myself Italian. I used Rosetta Stone to see how their program worked, I found myself lost after just a few chapters. I would highly recommend Fluenz to anyone wanting to learn a new language. Fluenz is a well thought out program that eases you into the new language.

Useful but tedious Fluenz French has been useful, however, I find the lessons to be tedious. It is the same format for every lesson. I understand why they designed it this way, but I appreciate a deviation every now and then. I purchased French 1-3 and to complete 90 lessons in the same format certainly does not make me look forward to the experience. In addition, some key conversational vocabulary is missing. For instance, I am almost finished with French 2, and I have yet to learn the vocab for breakfast, lunch and dinner. Yet I do know how to conjugate the verbs for I want, I must, I need and I would like. It seems like their prioritization is off. I am having to rely on other resources to teach me basic conversational phrases. I think the greatest enhancement to this program would be more focus on useful vocab and less on similar verbs and complex sentence structures that may never be used in a simple trip to France.