Customer Reviews

Berlitz Intermediate Italian (English and Italian Edition)

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I've used Berlitz Premier Italian (Berlitz Premier), this intermediate package and Berlitz Advanced Italian. All three were valuable learning tools. Over the past two years, I've used the CDs in all three packages to supplement what I'm learning in Italian school (Parliamo Italiano in NYC) and with a private tutor. All the CDs have great dialogues and I've literally spent hundreds of hours listening to them. They offer two advantages over school: unlimited repetition and an escape from listening to other students' mistakes and bad accents. The written material in these packages, available via download in the 6-CD beginners' (Premier) pack and included as books in the intermediate and advanced packages, is decent, but not a substitute for a more structured grammar book.

Advertising for language-learning materials usually promises more or less instant, effortless results. That's unrealistic with any product. Considering the amount of time I've listened to the Berlitz CDs and what I've learned from them, I think that they are an incredibly good value.

My major criticism of Berlitz is that they offer a bewildering array of products, many with similar-sounding titles. The material covered is never explained. They just tell you the number of CDs in the package, which in itself doesn't mean anything. In fact, I would say that most of the CDs run around 25-30 minutes, less than half of their capacity. Berlitz needs to hire a product manager who can rationalize the brand's various offerings and define a clear path for people who really want to learn Italian, as opposed to just restaurant or travel Italian.

Still, regardless of the brand's muddled marketing, the actual Berlitz audio products are quite good.

For each lesson you first listen to an audio clip, repeat, then do around 4 short (5~ question) exersices for each lesson. Chapters are broken down into lessons. You can download a free PDF transcript from their website. The actual book only contains very small parts of the dialogue in the CD, not the whole transcript. The book is very well made. It has glossy, thick pages. The cardboard box contains the 1 book and 3 CDs. Intermediate Italian doesn't have any pronunciation charts, but Basic Italian does have one lesson for pronunciation.

Now for the bad. The dialogue is not always the same as the PDF transcript. For example: dialogue says "nel Piemonte", while you'll find "in Piemonte" in the transcript. In one particular dialogue, the actress mumbled and pronounced "vi laghi" instead of "i laghi" and "la riviera ligura" instead of "la riviera ligure". In the storyline the actress is supposed to be a tourist in Italy, so maybe she mispronounced on purpose or they hired a foreigner as an actress.

Berlitz Italian is not perfect, but it's the best you can get. At least Berlitz doesn't use Anglosized pronunciation charts like other language learning sources (Living Languages is one example). This book/CD would be perfect if they utilized IPA and double checked the audio for incompetent actors.

I will continue using products by Berlitz.

I bought this with the basic and was so disappointed with the basic, I never opened the intermediate. It is basically an upgrade (to CD's) the "Listen to me pronounce the words" system commonly available on cassette tapes 20 years ago. Mine is still unopened, so I'll probably put it on Amazon soon. I'll be traveling to Italy this summer using my phrase book again!

If you a serious about learning Italian, you must get this. This product is with the Berlitz touch, well done and even somewhat fun. To the point, had phrases that you can use.

I thought I would be able to learn Italian while driving in my car. However, you need to follow the Course Book while listening to the CD. It defeated my purpose of learning while driving. I gave it two stars because I could still learn some of the language without the book, but I'm going to return it anyway.