Answer Question
For the Fluenz Team: Suggestions for Improvement
I hope someone from the Fluenz team will read and respond to my concern.
Overall I'm enjoying Fluenz so far. I'm new, only on session 10 of Italian 1, but already I notice improvements in my speech and comprehension. I've been a Rosetta Stone user, and can honestly say that Fluenz is superior -- except two odd issues I've encountered.
First is the complete absence of the informal "tu." Other Fluenz users have told me that this gets introduced later, but why? I believe that introducing it later will merely cause frustration -- and it also creates errors in Fluenz. If I find one or two errors in any type of learning program, I wonder if there are others which I'm not catching. For example, in session 10 during the phone conversation, when woman #1 calls Claudia, they are obviously friends by the light tone and the fact that she calls Claudia by her first name. Despite this, she asks, "Dov' è Lei adesso?" This seems very odd. Why would friends use the formal "Lei" between each other? They wouldn't. To someone completely new to Italian, it'll come as a shock "after the fact" that there is another way to say "you." When verbs are conjugated, the informal "tu" is left completely off, as if it doesn't exist. I believe this needs to be corrected. This should properly be introduced from the beginning so as to avoid future confusion and frustration among Fluenz learners.
The other problem I have is Fluenz's insistence in placing a space between words in contractions. This is incorrect. Every workbook and Italian novel I've looked at doesn't do this. I asked my Italian tutor, from Sicily, and he said that never is there a space. "Un'altra cosa", NOT "Un' altra cosa." Again other Fluenz learners have told me that this is corrected in later lessons, but why? Why does Fluenz make us learn something incorrectly only to make us unlearn later, so we can learn the correct way? Why not just teach the correct way from the beginning?
This makes me wary of anything Fluenz teaches. What else am I going to have to "unlearn"?
Would you consider correcting this in your future versions?
Overall I'm enjoying Fluenz so far. I'm new, only on session 10 of Italian 1, but already I notice improvements in my speech and comprehension. I've been a Rosetta Stone user, and can honestly say that Fluenz is superior -- except two odd issues I've encountered.
First is the complete absence of the informal "tu." Other Fluenz users have told me that this gets introduced later, but why? I believe that introducing it later will merely cause frustration -- and it also creates errors in Fluenz. If I find one or two errors in any type of learning program, I wonder if there are others which I'm not catching. For example, in session 10 during the phone conversation, when woman #1 calls Claudia, they are obviously friends by the light tone and the fact that she calls Claudia by her first name. Despite this, she asks, "Dov' è Lei adesso?" This seems very odd. Why would friends use the formal "Lei" between each other? They wouldn't. To someone completely new to Italian, it'll come as a shock "after the fact" that there is another way to say "you." When verbs are conjugated, the informal "tu" is left completely off, as if it doesn't exist. I believe this needs to be corrected. This should properly be introduced from the beginning so as to avoid future confusion and frustration among Fluenz learners.
The other problem I have is Fluenz's insistence in placing a space between words in contractions. This is incorrect. Every workbook and Italian novel I've looked at doesn't do this. I asked my Italian tutor, from Sicily, and he said that never is there a space. "Un'altra cosa", NOT "Un' altra cosa." Again other Fluenz learners have told me that this is corrected in later lessons, but why? Why does Fluenz make us learn something incorrectly only to make us unlearn later, so we can learn the correct way? Why not just teach the correct way from the beginning?
This makes me wary of anything Fluenz teaches. What else am I going to have to "unlearn"?
Would you consider correcting this in your future versions?