started with a program called Italy Made Easy

Thanks for the suggestion! That's another one for me to look into :)

What are your thoughts on the courses you mentioned?

I've found them both excellent for learning speaking, especially for sentence structure and constructing more elaborate sentences. Just from using these courses I was able to express myself and have basic conversations while I was in Italy.

They haven't really helped with listening comprehension though, so that's one thing I'll want to focus on when I finish these. When trying to have conversations, even if we were on a topic I could talk about, by the time I'd understood the previous sentence the moment to speak would've passed. I think this is normal, but definitely something I want to practice.