Customer Reviews

Italian I

5 star:		(59)
4 star:		(23)
3 star:		(7)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I have done Pimsleur French (I -III), Spanish(I-III), and am now working on Italian II. I am looking forward to doing German, and more in the future. Yes, I'm a Pimsleur addict. And I'm someone who took two years of French in college and never learned how to say anything. I'm also someone who got my lowest grade in college in foreign language! And that's after lots of work then.

But, Pimsleur really, really, does teach you how to converse, if you are willing and able to pay the money, and put in the time.You won't know lots of vocabulary (but that's easy to learn later) but you will know how to construct all the basic sentences you need to. You'll be able to converse with people at the train station when your train is delayed, at the store when you buy something, etc. This is converse not just ask directions! and people will tell you your accent is pretty good.

If you are very serious about being fluent, or knowing how to read, you will need other info later - but if you really, really want to be able to manage like a cosmopolitan tourist or business person, not like the typical English only American, these are the best courses.

I recommend allowing a minimum of a month for each I, II, and III. More is better. I really 'get' it if I work through and then put them away for a few months, and then go back. Doing the first one only will not really prepare you to converse, but you will be able to order at restaurants and stores, and be polite. The second will allow simple conversation, and the third more complex conversation - especially if you work on your own on your own vocabulary for your sitaution.

Fugeddabout it! The best way to learn to speak Italian. Took these cassettes to Italy with me when I was about a third of the way through them. I had no problem getting around and communicating, even in towns where little or no Inglese was spoken. I couldn't hold a deep conversation, or a lengthy one, but to be able to survive in a foreign language when still completing level I was really gratifying. And recently I bought Ultimate Italian as a supplement. It's good, but nowhere near Pimsleur. Pimsleur is brilliantly designed to lock the learning into your memory. You find yourself thinking in Italian, not translating back and forth in your head. There are, of course, less expensive vendors of Pimsleur to be found on the internet, e.g., languagelovers.com. But the course is worth every Euro. I can't wait to start Level II. If you can afford it, and your interest is chiefly speaking Italian rather than reading and writing it, this is tops. If, on the other hand, you want to read and write in Italian, you should look for a different course or supplement this one.

Before reading the rest of the review please keep in mind the following facts about my background so that you can take the comments from that perspective. I have been studying foreign languages on and off for about 20 years. I enjoy studying the minutia of grammar. I have studied French in depth from books and from watching French TV. I have studied some Italian from books. Enough about me.

I have just finished Italian I and I will go through it one more time before ordering Italian II.

I am not easily impressed, but I am very impressed with the Pimsleur method. I have bought many learning tools including software and books to try to help learn foreign languages. This Pimsleur course is by far the best in my opinion.

The method I have used to learn French focused on first learning the grammar in detail, then watching French TV with a dictionary in my hand. The result is that after doing this for years I can understand French pefectly. The problem is that I can't speak it.

The Pimsleur method actually forces you to learn to speak the language. It works very well. You learn the grammar indirectly. Like others I wish there were more grammar explanations, but for me it didn't matter since I have some background in Italian Grammar.

I would recommend getting one of the Italian grammar basics books. It would help you to understand some things better.

For proper pronounciation, the pimsleur method is awesome.

The Pimsleur method says not to use books. They say that the reason is because you will anglicize the pronounciation. This means that you will pronounce it using English phoenetics. I found this to be very true. These cd's corrected a ton of pronounciation errors I was making.

The fact that the method forces you to speak is a very important component. While you can understand a language it takes a lot of practice to speak it. Pimsleur is the only method that I know of that will help you to accomplish this.

At the same time you learn to understand the language because Italian is being spoken on the cd's.

Keep in mind that these courses will not make you fluent, but they will help you to be able to be functional in the language. The lessons have been contructed very well to do this.

To take your abilities to the next level you will have to learn more verbs and more vocabulary. You will also have to watch Italian tv regularly to really get your ear tuned. This will take some time. It will also help to talk to some Italian people.

The other thing I wanted to tell you is that all the time you spend learning will not go to waste. You will retain most of what you learned for years without having to study much at all. For some reason the brain's language centers allow this. I haven't studied French for 8 years, yet I can still understand every word of it. So keep in mind your hard work will stick with you.

I go about learning languages in a very detailed and technical way, and I want to tell you how happy and impressed I am with the Pimsleur method. To me it has most all of the necessary components to facilitate your learning a language in the most efficient way.

I will post a review of Italian II when I get through with it.

Good Luck.

Pimsleur Italian I, as well as the other like products in the series, is good for basic instruction; that is, if you already have a fundamental understanding of romance languages and various other resources at your command.

Independently, learning the language via self instruction and use of books and such can be overwhelming, thus Pimsleur can be a good tool. I believe it's good for people who are not willing or ready to commit to a classroom, but have a lot of self initiative to learn. For instance, I came back from Italy after living there for several months and then wanted to improve my skills. Pimsleur can help motivate and give you a good starting map, instead of simply gazing inside a text book and hoping for the best.

Pimsleur will take you by the hand and guide you through basic pronunciations, phrasings and sentence construction. It prepares and frames your mind appropriately for taking an active learning, not just to see the words on page and wonder where to put your emphasis. This causes you to speak your way into the language and start thinking in Italian. Preparing the mind mentally is perhaps a major advantage to learning.

If there are any problems, perhaps it is that Pimsleur often seems to jump into the conversation too easily; that is, while it assumes that you will figure out the actual words, conjugations and agreements. Italian has many agreements, between verbs, nouns, adjectives, adverbs and so on. It can be very complicated and confusing at times to learn this language. (I find it more difficult than learning French.) Usually, Pimsleur does not explain these things or it seems to oversimplify.

I have found that Pimsleur would be very confusing, if not frustrating, if I did not have text books, a dictionary and other online language guides to figure out how they constructed a sentence, created an agreement or verb conjugation. Indeed, many times I thought that I had comprehended a sentence right, but only later realized that I had not. My basic familiarity with the language also helps, but so do my other resources.

As I developed my experience with the instruction, I also realize that Pimsleur's lessons were jumping from use of present tense to other tenses like the conditional and so on. That's fine, but it was doing so without making it explicitly clear to the listener what they were doing and why.

I don't know how anyone could possibly speak clearly and pronounce words right, if they don't understand what particular verb conjugations and agreements are being made. There is no real phrase or instruction book guiding you with the various chapter lessons. The only book that is provided is that which is solely for verbal speaking exercises. These exercises are separate and having nothing to do with the rest of the instruction. In pronunciation lessons, you simply listen and repeat, without analyzing what you are actually saying. These verbal pronunciation practices have no other purpose other than seeing some vague written sentences and then trying to repeat them after the instructor's announcement. (Listen and repeat... listen and repeat). As such, the listener does not see the rest of the actual substance of the instruction being spelled out, or its sentences written down on the page. He or she simply listens and learns to speak them.

At best, the listener needs to take notes and then figure it all out on their own and along the way through the process. Otherwise, he or she will struggle and learn to speak awkwardly.

I had brought the complete sets of three volumes for both French and Russian before giving the Italian CDs a try prior to a trip to Italy. I recommend Pimsleur with glowing enthusiasm to many friends and work colleagues, who have all raved about them. Many of them have caught the language bug off me after trying Pimsleur courses - whether French, Cantonese, Arabic or Italian. One person said Pimsleur was the only thing in 20 years that he had found to help him learn Cantonese and zoomed through the first volume at an amazing pace. Other work colleagues of Italian descent who have harboured a life long guilt for losing their language heritage have found these lessons highly therapeutic.

I am a fluent speaker of English, German and Japanese. I have taught languages myself and have additionally studied French and Latin in the past. I am something of an amateur linguistic with a life-long love of languages. When I speak German (I studied it at university for a year) people's jaws drop because I sound like a native speaker. I love reading Goethe in German and also read technical journal articles on molecular biology, but I really wish I'd discovered Pimsleur earlier. Over the decades I have been exposed to countless different linguistic approaches to learning languages, but none have impressed me as much as that of Pimsleur. I have even ordered CD courses in German from Amazon.de from companies such as Langenscheidt. The language CDs available in German are far superior to the vast majority of the courses you can get in the English language, but still only Pimsleur teaches language in the same way that I have intuitively learned to learn languages on my own over the years. I am so happy that someone has gone out and 'bottled' the secret techniques of good language learners so that people everywhere can discover how much fun learning languages can be.

If you buy cheaper alternatives to Pimsleur you are short changing yourself severely. Costly though you may think they are, enrolling in a course or getting private tuition will cost you at least as much and probably far more. Being a fluent speaker of a language and being a good teacher are also quite different things, so you may yet end up with teacher who is fluent at a language but poor at teaching it. With Pimsleur you are guaranteed a meticulously structured approach to learning in which you can have complete confidence. Also many of us lead busy lives and may have trouble making it to classes. With Pimsleur CDs and an MP3 player you can learn while you drive, in the plane, while sitting in the train, while waiting in long queues or while going around the supermarket. Half an hour here and there soon adds up.

Needless to say my Russian friends are floored when I speak Russian. They say I speak with virtually no accent. With time I think I will expand my knowledge to the point that people think I am a native speaker. As for the French course I brought that for my partner. I also quickly did as many CDs as I could before our trip to France and again people were pleasantly surprised at the quality of my French. Before the next trip to Geneva I went through some more lessons and people in shops would stop to compliment my French. The things that came up in these situations were often almost word for word out the Pimsleur lessons which ingrains the ability to intuitively respond to these sort of verbal prompts. The same went for the Italian course, whose approach is identical to that of Pimsleur Russian and French - systematic, and deeply intuitive. I only managed to do a handful of lessons before I got to Italy but it certainly came in handy.

In the case of Italian in particular the proximity of the Latin languages to English is particularly suitable to the Pimsleur approach, and allows you to progress at a much faster rate than with, say Russian or Arabic. Pimsleur gives you the platform to further my language abilities in a way that no other course I have ever seen even comes close to.

Lastly my minor list of criticisms:

1. Although the intuitive natural learning techniques of Pimsleur should be the basis of learning languages, I am still a great believer in studying old fashioned grammar (I did Latin!). For every language you can find yourself a ready nice grammatical text. I wish Pimsleur would sell a text book companion to their recordings that makes learning grammar as fun as their recordings.

2. The recorded sound quality on my Russian CDs was washy. The words sometimes sounded unclear. The French and Italian CDs so far have been better though still less than absolutely perfect - but surely for this price I can't believe this is an issue.

3. Lack of full printed transcripts of all of the recordings. Maybe they can provide this on a CD-ROM if printing it is too expensive.

Pimsleur is truly the best method out there. It's price is justified by the quality of the instruction. I initially found it frustrating not having "the rules" explained to me (there is a little explanation, but not the extent that I thought was "proper" for a language course). In the end I gave up trying to puzzle out "the rules" and just enjoyed the lessons. And they are enjoyable - you are having real conversations, not the high-school "where is the red dress of the baker's daughter" stuff. I would recommend doing all 3 levels before attempting to study the written and grammatical areas of Italian. Why? Well, I've just started learning this side of the language in a formal class, and I'm breezing through it - I seem to have acquired much of the grammar subconsciously! I have much less trouble than my fellow students with the different pronunciation of things like "ce", "gli" and "sce" because I learnt the pronunciation of the words thoroughly before I was presented with the, to English-speakers, contradictory spelling. In addition, my teacher constantly praises my accent, and when I visited Italy, I was often complimented on my pronunciation. Yes, it's expensive, but worth every cent.

First some background about me to help you put my review in context. I consider myself only an average (maybe even less than that) language student. Years ago I took spanish in HS and could pass written tests. But like the proverbial American language student, I couldn't even order a burrito in spanish.

I became interested in learning italian and took a class at a local CC, which I ended up dropping. The pace was too quick, for one. Dozens of new words each week, and the teacher might say each one once. From that I was supposed to know the correct pronounciation -- NOT! I realized I was on the HS path again; I'd be able to pass tests but wouldn't be able to order a glass of chianti if I actually had to ask for it. And I wanted to speak to people, not pass written tests.

Pimsleur has been like a dream come true! The lessons are carefully paced and you hear each phrase or word over and over. They drill you on it, too, just like having your own personal coach who never gets tired or frustrated. "Ask me where Venito street is", "It's over there", for example, with variations until you can do it in your sleep. And they constantly remind you to check your pronounciation against that of the speaker.

I really can't speak an incredible amount after the 30 lessons, its not like I'm going to be reading the newspaper or chatting with people in italian. But I CAN ask how much something costs, know the numbers, can ask what time it is, can ask for beer/wine/water/milk/coffee, know the polite greetings, can ask for simple directions, and more. And all this from talking to my car on the way to/from work! BTW even though Pimsleur suggests one lesson a day I had to repeat each 2 or 3 times (over the same day or 2 days) in order to get it right.

That's the good news, and it IS good. I do want to point out a few problems to keep it balanced. First off, I'm lucky to work with people who are fluent in italian. The CDs don't explain a lot of the grammar, and sometimes the sentence is hard to hear. In the later CDs they tend to present some new material quite rapidly and I'm not sure if its an "ee" or "aa" sound I'm hearing, for example. And the CD's have only a single track per 30 minute lesson! Why the heck didn't they split it into more tracks so you could jump back to an earlier part easily?

And while Pimsleur does advise against relying on written material, I've found I have to write it down in order to review the vocabulary. They're right, the english system is so engrained it interferes with pronouncing some words correctly if you write them down. So it would have been nice if they had a review disk with a few minutes per set of 3 or 4 lessons so you could quickly review, or at least made sure all the words are regularly reused. Pimsleur has this idea of graduated intervals so they'll give you a new word/phrase, then repeat it soon after, increasing the time between repetitions but not so long that you've forgotten it. It works great, but their window seems to only encompass a few CDs; after that they seem to figure you know it forever. There are words you hear over a few CDs and then just never hear again. Maybe Pimsleur expects you to remember them forever, but it isn't working that way for me. So I have to write them down so I can review them.

Don't get me wrong, these issues don't make the program not worth buying; I did give it 5 stars and am delighted I found it. I couldn't have learned to speak any other way. While I can't say that much, at least what I do know IS learned and I won't need to be flipping thru phrasebooks to ask where the bathroom is or order a glass of wine. Bottom-line, thank you Pimsleur!!

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to add a postscript, I took my trip to Italy and the prep from this course was amazing! I could rent rooms, order food, ask directions, etc. Sure, I couldn't carry on "real" conversations. But I could function at a very basic level in the actual language of the country rather than having to be the ugly American who expects everyone else to speak English. The course was well worth it, and now I'm going to do courses II and III for my next trip!

I purchased Italian I upon recommendation from a friend. I had completed Italian I in Rosetta Stone and had difficulty completing the lessons (they became tedious after a while). Although I was learning some Italian with the Rosetta Stone program, I found that I wasn't really learning words or phrases that could be used in conversation (although towards the end I learned directions and greetings). Rosetta Stone did help me learn sentence structure.

The Pimsleur approach is quite different from Rosetta Stone. Pimsleur teaches conversational Italian. Rosetta stone uses pictures and words to teach while Pimsleur uses listening and reasoning to teach.

I like Pimsleur because they teach you a phrase (for example, vorre bere qualcosa [I would like something to drink]) and then teach you other verbs (for example, mangare [to eat]) and then they ask you how would you say "I would like something to eat?"? They periodically review older vocabulary and continually introduce new vocabulary and use it at conversational speed. I found that Pimsleur is like having someone continuously quiz you on Italian. The lessons make you think about the structure of the language and how words relate to each other. In some cases, I do wish that they would provide a little more background explaining some of the grammar.

I have also found that my pronunciation is far better with Pimsleur than it was with Rosetta Stone. I am also finding that I can understand bits and pieces of Italian news programs because I am learning at conversational speed. It is something that works best if you do it every day and I often find myself repeating lessons 4-5 times to ensure I get it - and I don't find it boring even though I'm doing the same lessons again. It is convenient because the lessons are audio so I find that they are good to do while driving or exercising. Although there is very limited reading, I found reading to be much easier than with Rosetta Stone. I have to say that this approach works well because Italian is a relatively easy language for English speakers. I think that more difficult languages could be much more challenging.

Really outstanding courses (I am writing about Italian 1,2 and 3)which are very well structured to consolidate and extend learning in a logical and manageable way. Excellent support for pronunciation and developing vocabulary. In fact, if you want to buy something which will focus you on getting enough spoken language skills to cope very adequately with a wide range of visitor situations then this is the best I have found after extensive searching for materials. There are however a few important caveats which don't negate the praise but need to be considered:no chapter cues within lessons so if you need to check something despite the generally clear sound and very helpful repetitions, you have to go back to the start of the lesson, a real pain, and increasingly troublesome as you progress through the course. The absence of any printed materials directly relating to lesson content and grammar is good in that it focuses the listener on the spoken language, but, when combined with my first point, really is a problem. If you can't rewind, it would at least be helpful if each lessons new vocabulary and grammar points could be listed/summarised. They aren't!

Finally, and I really think this is an issue when taken into consideration with the other two points, the cost: if one pays this much money for the course, then I think that it is reasonable that every predictable student need relating to the course should be catered for. I think that at half the price it would be a reasonable deal IF there were chapter breaks, lesson vocab lists and a grammar book covering the lesson content: as it stands I would say the course is outrageously expensive and bad business. They aren't going to get the sales the quality of the product really deserves

I have been trying to learn Italian for many years now - self training, mostly from books. So my experience with Pimsleur I is not from the point of view of someone who's never been exposed to the Italian language before. Having said that, my level of comprehension before starting this product was not much above "beginner".

Having read various "Teach Yourself Italian" books prior, I can confidently say I have not felt as pleased with my learning progress as I have now I've been through this course.

The pace starts off slow but steadily progresses at a comfortable pace. Hearing and speaking Italian is 1000% better than reading it in your mind, and so the result is a smile on your face! No need to guess which syllable of a word is the one to stress when you are constantly hearing it (compared to reading).

Because I had a mild exposure to the Italian language through my books, it was natural for me to picture the word being spoken in my mind. I'm sure that's not what the intention of the course is, but that's what worked for me - even to the point of hearing a new word and having to look it up so I could know with confidence I was pronouncing it correctly.

The speed of which the native speakers talk is very fast and somewhat annoying at first. However, I'm currently up to Italian III and am now accustomed to this pace of speech (which is entirely the point).

Lastly, Italian has a formal style of speaking and an informal way. As well as this, pronouns are normally only used when requiring emphasis. Level I uses only the formal style of speaking throughout and expresses all sentences using pronouns. For a complete beginner, this is probably a good thing, but for someone starting at my level, or someone repeating the course, it was a little frustrating. This disappears in Italian II.