Customer Reviews

Italian Complete Course: Basic-Intermediate, Compact Disc Edition (LL(R) Complete Basic Courses)

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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.

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.

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.

I got this set for my daughter because it had CDs instead of the cassette tapes,
so she could listen to them in the car. However, the Italian must be followed along in the
lesson book, as you listen, in order to find the meaning of what you are hearing, and she
couldn't do that while she was driving.

The Italian narrators are fine as they speak very clearly, and the lessons cover most
of the basics. The dictionary is concise (purse-sized), but it has only translations of
the words (Italian to English/English to Italian) not any phonetic pronunciations.
Overall, a nice little set if you are seriously interested in sitting down and reading
the lessons as you listen.

It may or may not be useful for people who want to learn with book and CD, but I wanted something I could learn from driving my car or in the background at home when doing other things. All of the Italian is on the CD's, with no English. So I will probably not learn one word of Italian, and will order a course from the library. For people with time to do concentrated study I understand the economy and efficiency of having only the Italian on CD's, plus you see the spelling in the books. For me it was not the right course.

I just completed the Living Language Italian and it's one of the best courses I have ever used. The fact that there was no English on the CDs forced me to examine all of the words and understand the grammar. This process made subsequent lessons easier. I also liked the pace at which it moved. I agree that the quizzes were a bit thin, so I made up my own. Next it's the Ultimate Italian. Rome here I come!