Customer Reviews

Italian Now!: A Level One Worktext

5 star:		(17)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

A woman that is passionately in love with Italy and all things Italian writes this review. I tend to study the Italian language before my trips to Italy and then immediately stop using it once the trip is over. I have finally decided to get serious about studying Italian on an ongoing basis and bought this book. The book is much more complete than I expected it to be. I will summarize the layout of the book and the pros and cons from my perspective.

The book is subdivided as follows:
1. The Basics
2. Expanding Basic Skills
3. Interacting with People
4. Daily Life
5. Getting Around
6. Hobbies and Vacations

This book is written in short chapters that tend to be about 10 pages each. These short sections are very easy to get through in 10-minute snippets of time. Each chapter contains the following sections:

a) Conversations: written in Italian and English
b) Comprehension: questions about the conversation written in Italian
c) Vocabulary: written in Italian and English
d) Language skills: expands grammar and language usage
e) Culture: information about Italian culture
f) Exercises: to allow you to practice what you learned in the chapter
g) Review: which is included every 5 chapters to reinforce learning

Pros:
1. Very well designed to maximize learning without overwhelming the student
2. Excellent at teaching written Italian
3. Good for learning grammar and proper sentence structure
4. Provides written guide for pronunciation
5. Big book, 544 pages in length
6. Answers to the exercises and questions are provided in the back of the book

Cons:
1. Would be very difficult to learn to speak Italian from this book alone

Overall, I think this is an excellent book for someone learning Italian in a classroom setting, or as an additional teaching aid to an audio course. I do not feel that this book (or any book) is adequate to learn spoken Italian, or any other language. I recommend this book to anyone that wants to expand his or her beginning study of Italian.

This is an excellent workbook to complement the audio portion of any self-study language program in italian. Its' strength is to present material in small digestible chunks of information of both grammar and vocabulary, that can be understood and digested on a daily basis. The practice exercises - that follow a dialog presentation of a typical activity representative of daily life and a small dose of grammar - reinforced the daily feeling of accomplishment.

If your intention is to learn italian and to dedicate at least a half hour to an hour a day, this is the perfect vehicle for doing so. Italian is a beautiful language, not only because of its sound and rhythm, but also because of its language structure. Highly recommended!!

I am using the Pimsleur series to start learning italian. Pimsleur is wonderful for getting you to say things, but it really skimps over grammar explanations, vocabulary, conjugating verbs, etc. This book really excels at filling the gaps. Pimsleur helps you say stuff, this book provides the skeleton that your speaking ability rests on. With exercises after each section, and short chapters that don't intimidate, I can't imagine a better book for a beginner. My advice is to thru the first 15 Pimsleur lessons (the first 30 would be even better) so you get a flavor for what the language sounds like without being worried too much by grammar. If you start with the book too soon your english-reading system will make it hard to pronounce the words correctly; an english speaker will read "grazie" as "grahzee" when it is actually closer to "grah tsee ah" and if you start learning words wrong from a book you'll have trouble correcting that from the tapes or even recognizing they're the same word! But this book is wonderful for explaining the subtleties you'll be wondering about after working thru some of the tapes, and it takes you far past what is presented even in the entire 90-lesson Pimsleur set.

Based on the positive reviews here, I was a little disappointed. What bothers me about this product is that it's not more systematic about teaching grammar and sentence structure. It starts out with a conversation, and then you answer questions based on the conversation. What you end up doing is *deducing* things about sentence structure, rather than learning them directly. What is really disappointing is the treatment of verbs. I see now that Amazon is recommending buying this book with a verb book, and I would say that is right on target! I already have a CD with some basic phrases, and a phrasebook - what I wanted was to start learning the rules of the language, and this includes conjugating verbs. Skimming through this book, the first info on conjugating any verb is not until Unit 4, p. 40, and it is only partial information! There, you will find "The Verb essere (to be): Part I," and it give present idicative for I am, you are and he/she is. The next verbs are not until p. 79, where you learn "it is raining/snowing." Are those really the most crucial verbs to learn? You have to wait until p. 106 to get the other forms of "essere": "we are" and "they are," along with the different present indicative forms of "to have." Why would anyone choose to put together a workbook like that?! Could it have to do with the fact that Barron's publishes both this workbook, and the separate book, "Italian Verb Workbook?" I'm guessing it does! I guess one could argue that a total of $21.70 for both of them, as currently found on Amazon, is not a bad deal. Still, it's irritating to me, because I thought I was buying a product that, while it certainly wouldn't take the place of an Italian class, would at least provide good coverage of verbs, which are essential to learning a language. Certainly, verbs are used in the conversations and exercises, and translated, but all the forms aren't presented together at once so that you can learn them properly until the pages I've indicated. Then, later on and throughout the book, there *are* more verbs. Still, I would have preferred more systematic treatment earlier on.

A caveat: I've only actually worked through a couple of pages of the workbook so far. Except for the frustration of not having better verb coverage, it looks OK. I would recommend the book *only* with one of the verb books sold at Amazon.

I bought this book when I was using the Rosetta Stone program because I got halfway through Italian 1 and could not ask basic questions in Italian. This book was a great supplement. It helped clarify structure and grammar and made it easy to learn. I think it is a good supplement to another learning program that focuses on pronunciation. This book could teach you to read Italian and give the fundamental principles of the language but you need to learn how to speak Italian as well.

I have been extremely pleased with this workbook. It has a large variety of exercises and puzzles that keep me interested. The grammatical explanations are clear and concise. The format is appealing and easy to read. I do a few sections each day, and I am making great progress without feeling overwhelmed.

The book is huge, too--a fantastic value for the price!

My only complaint is that not all new words are accompanied by a pronunciation guide--that is why I'm glad that I'm also using an audio program.

In preparation for our one-month, self-conducted tour of Italy which my wife and I took last spring, I completed Danesi's "Learn Italian the Fast and Fun Way," completed the first twenty chapters of "Italian Now!," and then finished the latter text after we returned home. "Italian Now!" was especially helpful because it forces you to write out many of the exercises and essays: in other words, it gives you thirty chapters of "hands on" practice to teach you the essentials of Italian language, and I've not seen a better beginning text--but I was glad that I had started with "Fast and Fun Way," otherwise "Italian Now!" may have been a bit too difficult at first. My only negative comments would be that I discovered a number of errors in the answer key and elsewhere in the text and, even though there are review sections at the end of each general section, I would have liked to have had more summary or comprehensive practice exercises that would have pulled everything together better.

I'm currently half way through this book, I hack away at it bit by bit in 1hr or 1 1/2hr segments everyday day or so. I'm an Italian destination specialist that is moving to Italia in one year. So of course I must learn the language. I do agree with another poster that on its own you can't learn the language with this guide. I started learning Italian August 2006, with the Rosetta Stone level 1&2, that took me 9 months to complete. It took me so long because I hand wrote and translated each and every lesson in addition to the audio learning software. I finished that in May 2007, I then started re reviewing Rosetta Stone little by little. But I found I couldn't get all the grammer correct. Rosetta Stone dosn't teach grammer all that much. Rosetta Stone has me speaking Italian but getting alot of grammer wrong. After returning from Italia again this August, I decided to futher my studies. I picked up this book along with the complete big yellow grammer book about a month ago or so. This book has really helped me grasp grammer and past/present/future/plural tenses so well and I'm only half way through it! My boss speaks Italian, so we together work over everything I don't understand on my own. But this lesson book is great. I'm so glad on a whim I just bought it! Cause I'm glued to it just about every evening for a little bit. Overall and excellent additional learning source

I am 11 years old and I wanted to teach myself Italian. This is a great book for beginners! At first there is a conversazione (conversation)in Italian with English reference. After the dialog you study your vocabulary and answer questions, which to my pleasure, I found exciting! This is also a good book for people traveling to Italy. Heres why: Not only do you learn the language, you learn the Italian culture! Ex: "A friend that you haven't seen in a while is usually greeted with a small kiss on the cheek, and a pat on the back." This a fast book to get through, especially if you are taking other programs along with it. I highly recommend this workbook!

I started learning Italian by myself using the Pimsleur (listen only) method and reached a point where I needed to learn how to read and write Italian and also grammar, etc. I tried a few books, but Italian Now! is the only one that I stuck to. It is fun, the lessons are organized in a very effective way; it makes it easy to memorize new information and understand the grammar, without seeming overbearing.