Customer Reviews

Hugo Language Course: Italian In Three Months

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

 

 

This book really keeps you moving forward, with grammar and vocab work on every page. It sticks to the point, with no redundant discussion, and the explanations are concise and very clear. There are short exercises to reinforce each step in the learning progression. There is enough help with pronunciation, including immitated pronunciation, which is cleverly arranged so it does not impede reading the main text. Eventually, you'll need support from a dictionary and a book on verbs, and continuing practice is essential, but this compact book provides a great foundation for a beginner in the Italian language. And it can be done in three months, at a steady 30-60 minutes per day.

I am a language learning lover and this was my first exposure to an Italian course. I got this kit a few weeks before my wife and I went to Italy for vacation. I managed to cover the first 6 lessons in 3 weeks and I was amazed by the amount of useful sentences/vocabulary that I accumulated by then. Listening to the tape is not enough, you have to grab the texts for the dialogues, read them over and over again and repeat the sentences so they really sink in your memory. The negative points, there is not long enough pauses between sentences in the dialogues to allow for you to repeat them and the grammar guides are scattered all over the place with no index at the end. This is a course geared towards everyday conversation essentials, renting a room, getting around the city, shopping, traveling etc. and I found it really worth the price.

This course is acceptable for one who is beginning to study this language, but not for one who would like a thorough review of how to use the language. Unless you already have some experience in the language, it'll be difficult to follow the course. Wave upon wave of things to get on your nerves are found in this course. For instance, at the beginning, the book gets involved with teaching very little grammar but giving a lot of sentences and vocabulary. This would be okay and a good way to let the language sink it, but it then follows this with going into exercises in which the reader has to answer questions using the words he or she has learned. Without knowing which words are translated into which and without knowing the grammar to Italian, one finds this to be a challenge. Several instances occur where the book uses vocabulary or grammar before actually teaching them. The vocabulary is also listed at the end of each chapter, but there is no reference section or appendix for grammar or verb tenses. The verbs are sporadically listed throughout the text, and the reader has to search for them should he or she forget a conjugation. It deals with basically every verb tense except for those within the subjunctive mood. But, once again, the reader has to memorize them as they come because there is no appendix for grammar or verbs. The glossary also doesn't recognize irregular verbs, which might cause some confusion. Also, the native speakers on the cassettes don't always say the correct readings which are in the book. They change words and sometimes add them. The best parts of this course are the several conversations and that the cassettes read many of the exercises in the book. The only way I made it through the course was because I've had some experience with the language already. I've had experience in several others, as well, so I know what I'm talking about when I say this is a weak course. Try finding something else instead of this. The books "Colloquial Italian" or "Italian All the Way" are extremely good courses. If you have a cassette of Italian already and a dictionary that recognizes stress on words, you won't need the cassettes to these courses. Italian orthography and pronunciation coincide almost always. Knowing the stress on words can be difficult at times, but dictionaries usually list the words (usually verbs) that carry and irregular stress pattern. Either of those two courses provide a strong base for further learning.

This is a course with one major problem - it stops half way. Most Hugo language courses in three months contain twelve chapters, one chapter for each week. For some reason, this book stops at ten, and that's not because everything crucial has been thought by then. Believe it or not, there is not one word on the subjunctive in this book! Why is that a problem? Well, anyone familiar with a Romance language like Italian, French, Spanish or Portuguese will know that the subjunctive is so important that you cannot produce even the simplest everyday phrases without it. Common phrases like "I'm happy you're here", "I don't think he's coming", "I would buy it if I had the money", "I hate to say this, but..." all require the subjunctive, you simply cannot speak Italian without it.

I had a look at another book in the same series, Portuguese in Three Months, as Portuguese and Italian are very close. Sure enough, it deals extensively with the subjunctive, chapters eleven and twelve are devoted to it. Those two chapters are missing from Italian in Three Months, and the result is that it's a course that won't teach you even the basics of the language.

I am really pleased with the pace of this book. I'm a professional translator so already have a background in languages. I get frustrated with slow-paced books and am glad to have found one that gives you exactly what is necessary and does not waste time repeating it over and over. It assumes that you are focussed on quality study rather than quantity when it comes to the exercises. My one minor criticism is that this book could easily be done in a week if you don't have other commitments or three weeks if you do. I'm very busy so I'm only doing three chapters a week, but I feel that if it continued at its current pace and maintained the same quality, one could get so much more out of it in three months, but then it would appear daunting to some, be more expensive to produce and not sell as well. Still, this is splitting hairs, so a resounding five.