Updated with a restyled handbook and improved cassettes, this program serves as a practical introduction to the spoken language for beginning students and helps travelers pick up enough Italian to find their way when in Italian-speaking places. The book and two cassettes have six study units that cover meeting people, shopping, getting about in a foreign city, finding somewhere to stay, eating out, and doing business. The two cassettes feature conversations and have timed pauses.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
18 of 18 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Helpful Tapes/Excellent Book,
By
This review is from: Getting By in Italian: with Audiocassettes (Audio Cassette)
I found this Barron's series very helpful in my attempts to prepare for a trip to Italy. The title is truth in advertising. These tapes are not for academics or those trying to learn fluency in the language, but instead they are meant for travelers and business people planning a short stay. They provide practical phrases, questions and answers for dining out, making hotel and camping reservations, using public transportation and setting up meetings with people."Getting By In Italian" utilizes a variety of methods to teach and to reinforce learning: imitation/repetition, games, word find puzzles, listening for newly learned phrases in "natural" conversations, and picking out the correct sentence out of several that are recited to you. Rather than relying on rote memory and repetition, it emphasizes picking out things from context -which is far more realistic for most travelers. The variety of methods made these tapes more pleasurable to listen to than either the Fodor's or Pimsleur tapes that I also used. The book that accompanies this set is possibly even better than the tapes. It provides a more complete translation than the tapes do and will serve as a nice reference on my trip. This set does have some weaknesses, however. First, the "natural" conversations (in hotels, restaurants and stores) that they recorded are sometimes very difficult to hear. You have to turn the volume way up and then you get BLASTED when the narrator comes back on. These tapes provide the correct pronunciation for a given phrase only once. The listener repeats it, but most of the time the phrase is not repeated a second time. Most other tapes will provide correct pronunciation more than once and expect the listener to repeat more than once as well. As a result, it helps to have a good ear and facility for language if using these tapes. Additionally, these tapes work best if you plan to follow along in the book. Some of the translations are not provided on the tape and the games usually require that you circle a correct answer or look at some written options that are before you. As a result, if you plan to listen to the tapes mostly in the car, you will definitely miss out on some things. At the same time, most people learn languages better if they can use more than one sense (i.e. just hearing.) Visual cues help to reinforce learning, so you're better off if you use both the book and the tape at the same time anyway. (Just not as convenient for those of us who like to listen in the car. The Pimsleur tapes - which have other weaknesses - are better for that.) Finally, the narrator is British, which is fine, but the American listener will have to pay close attention and translate certain phrases for themselves (i.e. "lift" for elevator and "power point" for electrical outlet.) All in all, I was satisfied with these tapes and so were my friends who tried them. The value for the price was also better than other tapes I purchased.
6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
Narrator put me to sleep,
This review is from: Getting By in Italian: with Audiocassettes (Audio Cassette)
After having used the "Getting by in French" and "Getting by in Spanish" with enthusiasm, I found the "Getting by in Italian" version very disappointing. Both the French and Spanish versions have an uplifting musical accompaniments to splice the different sections, and both the French and Spanish versions each have two narrators/hosts/teachers who banter back and forth with each other to make the learning more fun and make the material more retainable. However, on the Italian version, there is only one narrator, and she is slow and deliberate, as if she's reading from a script and she constantly refers the listener back to the book. I could not keep my attention easily focused on the speaker because her speech was too slow. I also found the French and Spanish versions nice because I could use them in the car or while doing household chores. This was not so easy to do with the Italian version because of the narrator's constant reference to the book.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
We got by,
By The Phantom Critic "baugmented" (Laguna Niguel, CA USA) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Getting By in Italian: with Audiocassettes (Audio Cassette)
We found the tapes to be extremely useful. We learned enough Italian to "get by" during our trip to Italy. We have lent the tapes to many of our friends.
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