Customer Reviews

Italian the Easy Way (Barron's E-Z)

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

 

 

I achieved a reasonable degree of proficiency in Italian several years ago, but through lack of use, have forgotten a lot. I bought this book with the intention of doing some self-guided study to "brush up". It is absolutely perfect for that use.

Each short lesson is followed by numerous written exercises. All the answers are in the back (no peeking!)

The book would be a useful supplement for anyone learning Italian through other means - in a class, via audio or computer-based courses. It would give the curious a basic understanding of grammar, but would not be a useful single tool for achieving spoken fluency or comprehension as it does not involve listening or speaking.

But for those in my situation, it is perfect, and much cheaper than buying a full grammar text and/or audio course, much of which you might not need.

I am an Italian student in college and bought this book to sharpen my understanding of Italian in general, and am very satisfied with the results. Both textual and graphical reinforcements are used here, which help when one is trying to learn vocabulary or increase his or her writing skills.

Each chapter is broken up into several sections where there is a short "lesson" followed by several reading, writing and vocabulary exercises. As you move on through the chapter you are expected to recall vocabulary and rules from previous chapters, further reinforcing these lessons while teaching new ones.

The exercises are very well put together and easy to understand. If one is having problems with a particular part of an exercise, it is also very easy to simply flip back and take a second look at a particular part of the lesson one is having trouble with. The organization is very clear, I did not lose my way at all as I very commonly do in these kind of books. In addition, the English/Italian, Italian/English mini-dictionaries in the back help immensely during writing exercises.

This is not a book I would recommend for people who are trying to learn Italian from scratch. It is built as a supplement for course and textbook work, and the mini lessons are exactly that: small and not detailed enough for someone who is not at least partially familiar with them. It is not a textbook and should not be taken as one.

For people who are looking to improve their understanding--or grades as the book promises--this is exactly what you are looking for.

This book is great for anyone who already has some working knowledge of Italian and wants to expand their skills. However, I would never recommend this book as a starting place to learn Italian from the ground up. It moves quickly and assumes some knowledge beforehand.

"Italian the Easy Way" is a great start for new Italian students. It covers a lot of ground, starting from the simplest vocabulary to basic Italian grammar to more complicated thoughts and sentences. The chapters are divided into short segments, with lots of practice sheets. It provides a thorough base for an Italian student, and turns the learning of the language into good clean fun.

Despite what any foreign language learning book says, there is no quick way to learn a language. At the same time, this book is a very good review or supplemental workbook and the title should be renamed "Italian: The Fun Way." In addition to short readings, dialogues and comprehension activities, there are some crossword and word-search puzzles. The first chapter, with the Italian sounds and pronunciations, is a feature which textbooks ought to follow because correct speaking is necessary for doing well in comprehension. The organizational charts are also superior to most textbooks, so that students will quickly understand the material. Also, all of the answers to the activities are furnished at the back of the book. Furthermore, the vocabulary checklist is a good way for students to record their progress. Although the material is not particularly unique as this information can be obtained through any first year textbook, the organization makes recalling knowledge much easier, and perhaps, helpful to students who need additional practice. Finally, the reasoning behind the lower ranking score is because the book does not have audio, and it seems necessary in order to study a language that there are audio lessons included with any type of language workbook. The title should also not give a false impression of the amount of hard work behind learning a language.

I studied Italian many years ago and wanted to refresh my understanding. This book has been a great help. The subject matter is well organized into tables and there are plenty of exercises to help you check your understanding. There are also lots of tips and other explanations to clarify the presented material. I highly recommend this book.

I purchased the kindle version of this book. The content of the book is largely in table format. The problem is that the print in the tables is very small and cannot be enlarged in the normal kindle fashion. Only the font size of the text outside of the tables can be modified. In addition, many of the tables look like photocopies made on a cheap printer that was running out of ink. This renders the tables useless, and since they contain almost all of the critical information necessary to learn the language, renders the entire kindle version useless.

this was a poor choice for the Kindle. the charts are on too many pages. the book is great, but I ended up having to purchase the book itself.

I have the 2nd edition of this book.

I'm surprised to see some reviews stating that they wouldn't recommend the book to an absolute beginner, rather only as a supplement to coursework, and that it shouldn't be taken as a "textbook".

In my opinion having this book to start with is a lot better than many textbooks, including the textbook I used in my Intro Italian class at university. I started learning Italian with the book and didn't enroll in an Italian course until I finished about half of it. I thought everything was so clearly explained and there were so many excellent examples that it was all you needed to get through the exercises and build on your Italian - from scratch. In no way was it overwhelming for me.

This book has all the things I look for when I search for language workbooks - plenty of exercises with an answer key in the back, a good English-Italian and Italian-English glossary, a wide variety of subjects, grammatical points, and vocabulary are covered, there are dots under letters to show where a stress is in pronouncing a word if the word is irregular as far as pronunciation, there are a variety of types of exercises [fill-in-the-blank, word search, crossword puzzles, being creative and making your own little stories which are the only exercises that there are no answers for). There are end-of-chapter reviews, and 3 "vocabulary checkpoints" with a list of vocabulary you should memorize before moving on, most of which you'll already have memorized just by being exposed to it already. I made flashcards for them.

The "cons" (of which there aren't many): answer key has 1 answer only for each exercise when some things can be written/said in more than 1 way. The other minor thing is that a few times I've come across errors in the answer key or the answers in the answer key don't match up. I'm still giving the book 5 stars though.

I recommend "Italian the Easy Way" to absolute beginners and of course to those who are taking a beginner's course in school, to supplement what you learn. To me it's worth about a year of university Italian and costs hundreds of dollars less. I was lucky and found mine for a penny (ok, plus $6.49 shipping and handling).

Was going to Northern Italy. Decided to take an Italian class at a local college. This was required for the class but none were available in their bookstore. I ordered it from Amamzon.com. It was new for less than $4. Even with S&H it cost 1/3 of what the other students paid. I plan to keep mine for reference.