Recently, I needed to study up on Italian for a trip to Italy. I found LiveMocha, which totally blew my mind -- basically a free version of Rosetta stone, but using social media really well. Real people correct your homework, real people listen to and correct short audio clips of you reading a transcript. It's freaking cool!!!
The LiveMocha course totally got me started with Italian. I visited Italy, and had some incidents of getting (very) lost (in the countryside) and having to ask for directions ... those kind of experiences really make you learn the language, but the LiveMocha kick-starter experienced helped.
So, now that I am back - and totally in love with Italy, I want to go back. My LiveMocha preparations (1.5 courses, 1 month before leaving) didn't really give me any conversational skills - and as a result, I was pretty much unable to construct sentences with verbs. I wound up looking up verb conjugations of as many useful verbs as I could think of -- which helped. But without a decent vocabulary, I was very limited in connecting with people. Usually, if I have more words I can be creative...but my italian vocabulary was way less than my french & spanish. And since I didn't really connect with people besides ordering food & tickets & blister bandaids...well, it isn't much of a learning experience.
So I am determined to do what I can, and go back to Italy with a better vocabulary, and some practice speaking.
Found that skype-based languages exchanges are also popular. Such as:
Italki is very cool next step once you get some language basics down. You can write blog posts & people correct your writing. I should like to do some sort of food blogging. I am also interested in skype-language partners.
Here are some other promising looking free-language learning solutions:
* Babbel.com Virtual Flash Card Language Share Site w/English, French, German, Italian, Spanish Tools
* Busuu Social Language Exchange Partner Community plus Multimedia Photo-Audio Lesson Archives and Video Chat Interface
* ECPod.com ECPod English Chinese Video Podcasts Uploaded By and For the Community
* expatriates.com Free International Multilingual Language Exchange Partner Classifieds
* italki.com Free Skype VoIP and IM Language Partner Community
* Language-Exchanges.org Mixxer Free Skype Language Exchange Community
* Lingopass.com Free Global Language Exchange Community
* LiveMocha.com Live Mocha Social Language Learning Course and Networking Website
* MyHappyPlanet.com My Happy Planet Private Social Language-Learning Community
* Palabea.net Palabea the Speaking World Social Language Exchange Network
* VoxSwap.com VoxSwap Online IM and Voice Social Foreign Language Exchange
* Worldia.net Worldia International Community to Learn and Teach Foreign Languages