Customer Reviews

Italian: Bilingual Audio Cassette Program (Lyric Language Series 1)

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This tape is a great learning tool for children of ALL ages. It teaches through song, simple things such as the alphabet, going shopping, etc.. I can't think of a better way to learn, than through music because it make it fun for both child and parent. We listen to it while driving so the errands don't seem so long. Another great thing about the cassette is that there are children singing, so children are able to capture the excitement. All songs are sung in English and Italian. Simply wonderful.

I bought this video hoping it'd be more like Bilingual Baby-Italian, which I loved because it takes on an immersion approach. But I found this tape's approach very confusing. Each song briefly starts out in Italian but predominately they sing the song by alternating English and Italian line by line. I found my brain overwhelmed by having to switch so frequently back and forth between the two languages and I'm fluent in Italian! If English needed to be included, a better approach would be to sing the song fully in one language or another. But since I bought this for my 16-month-old baby who lives in NY and is surrounded by English and has ample opportunity to learn English, I don't see why English even needs to be included. Afterall, the pictures are being illustrated. (Example: picture of elephants on the screen. Do we need to be told these are elephants when gli elefanti would be enough?) I thought my husband, who is trying to learn Italian, would like the tape but he didn't either -- but his primary complaint was that he didn't like the music. It doesn't appear the video makers got native speakers to sing because the pronounciations seem slightly off. It's helpful that the words do appear at the bottom of the screen, but they are printed too big and are a distraction. However, it's a good vocabulary builder if you have no choice.