I started learning italian last year with duolingo, and found it pretty good especially as it's free. But it wasn't helping me much decoding real spoken italian. This is where rocket really scores: it drills you mercilessly at both listening and speaking. And it doesn't provide a 'slow' setting for the many speaking exercises - which is forcing me to focus on the natural running together of words encountered when listening to real speech.

I paid about £80 for levels 1 and 2 courses, which was a recent special offer. Excellent value for money.

The basic principles used by rocket seem very good indeed. Of course I can see all sorts of improvements could be made, but these would require serious resources and no doubt raise the cost. Well done rocket.