26 of 29 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
Unstructured course with long vocabulary lists, November 25, 2004
This review is from: Italian Complete Course: Basic-Intermediate, Compact Disc Edition (LL(R) Complete Basic Courses) (Audio CD)
This course boasts of teaching 20,000 words, phrases and expressions. Maybe, I did not count. I did notice, however, that the course has neither structure, nor logic, nor exercises.
It consists of 3 CDs, one dictionary and a coursebook. Each word in the coursebook is spoken on the CD. All speakers seem to be native Italians. Sounds perfect, doesn't it? The problem is, that for beginning learners this 40-lesson course is pretty useless.
The first 2 lessons consist of long lists of names of people, cities, countries, Italian words that are similar to English words, the letters of the alphabet etc, all without sentences or context. Just long lists. Lessons 3 and 4 bring words for each of the vowels and consonants. Lesson five counts from 1 to 10, and has another set of lists for days, months, seasons etc. None of these words are used in sentences. Lesson six starts with sentences and explains some grammar, but again you just memorize long lists such as 8 different ways of saying good-bye, or 8 ways of saying nice-to-meet-you. Although those words will be very useful, should you ever get to memorize them out of context, the order in which they appear does not make sense at all. For example, in lesson 10 you learn in this order: the book is red, she is young, ice is cold, he is intelligent, it's me, I am Italian, what is it made of, it is silver, whose is this, the book belongs to Mr. Rossi, it is one o'clock. Etc, etc. Although at the beginning of this lesson you learned all forms of "to be" (I am, you are, etc.), the sentences deal with "is" only.
The course is not organized into topics and has no exercises, only a pretty useless quiz at the end of each chapter. The quiz consists of a few questions and the correct answers. All you need to do is match them correctly. All in all, the book will suit only people who love to memorize long lists of words and sentences. Too bad.
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13 of 14 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
One big thing overlooked here, June 4, 2005
This review is from: Italian Complete Course: Basic-Intermediate, Compact Disc Edition (LL(R) Complete Basic Courses) (Audio CD)
and that is the whole point of learning another language is memorization. Since we're so accustomed to speaking English and we learned the finer points of it so long ago in elementary school, we forgot that we had to memorize the parts of speech and learn different expressions. The same is true for learning another language.
I can dig what the majority of folks here complain about the series not putting any of your new knowledge to practice - the second most important part of learning a language (if not tied for most important).
The Living Language series is a starter course, designed to give beginners the basics of the language - the alphabet, foreign letters in that language's alphabet (the letters j, k, x, w, and y are not part of the Italian alphabet), cognates (similar words in Italian and English), everyday expressions, and so on.
I wouldn't recommend the Living Language series as the be all and end all of language instruction. It is one of the cheapest programs on the bookshelf and the final product is a reflection of that.
The best bet to learning a language is going to the local community college (if you have the money and the time) and taking a course there, although those are more inclined to be immersion courses (where the instructor's idea of learning a language is for you to hear it spoken and learn it as you go along) or you could go to your local Italian cultural society and see what they have to offer (Philadelphia, for instance, has the America-Italy Society which offers Italian language classes. The Sons of Italy, at least in these parts, do not offer such).
Learning another language is not the same for everyone. What works for some may not work for others.
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7 of 9 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
CD contains no English, September 16, 2004
This review is from: Italian Complete Course: Basic-Intermediate, Compact Disc Edition (LL(R) Complete Basic Courses) (Audio CD)
Fortunately, I checked this one out of the library before buying it. I was expecting some CD's with translations so I can bring with me when I commute to work. The CD's contain Italian only phrases with no translations. You'll be lost without the course book. Not what I was expecting.
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