53 of 54 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Pimsleur Italian I : Very Impressive !!, April 7, 2001
This review is from: Italian I : Pimsleur Comprehensive (Pimsleur CD Series) (Audio CD)
Pimsleur Level I is the best introduction to the Italian language you can have. At the end of Level I, you will not have an in-depth knowlege of the Italian language, but what you will have is a thorough grounding of how to use many essential greetings and phrases. The key here is - you will KNOW what you have learned. You will NOT have to refer back to the phrase book from your other, less expensive course. This is the success of Pimsleur products, you actually LEARN and AQUIRE language!
Furthermore, you will be well grounded to move on to more advanced Italian fluency found in the other Pimsleur Italian levels. I am now well into level III and I am not disappointed or sorry for having taken my time and money into these programs. If you are serious about language aquisition, you will soon realize fluency demands dedication and months of practice. I listened to almost every lesson 2 times, and I soon learned that if you listen to a lesson, and then go back to it the next day (instead of repeating the lesson within a few hours), your comprehension is greatly enhanced.
If you are genuinely serious about learning a language, particularly Italian, get Pimsleur I and then levels II and III. These are not the "express" way to get through Italian, but "express" methods simply do not work unless your language needs are for hailing taxi's in Rome! You will find Pimsleur Italian I (and the others) quite enjoyable as well, and I don't think you will be disappointed! Good luck!
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32 of 35 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
It is the best audio learning option I could find, May 22, 2004
This review is from: Italian I : Pimsleur Comprehensive (Pimsleur CD Series) (Audio CD)
I just completed Pimsleur Italian I and I'm very pleased with it. I am now beginning Pimsleur Italian II.
The course is not perfect but it is far superior to all of the other audio courses I have tried or examined. As somone familiar with earning theory, I absolutely agree that Pimsleur duplicates the same language acquistion method we use to acquire language as children. I have, however, some suggestions for gaining the most from the course.
1. Get a good dictionary, a verb conjugation book and look up words in the lessons so that you can write them down. Aural learning is great but accompanying visual learning it is even better.
2. After listening to each lesson a few times, write them out, in sequence, on 3x5 cards and use them as "drill flash cards" (I put the English on the front and the Italian on the back and fill each card up with as many phrases as would fit). This is a bit of work but also extremely helpful for forming a Gestalt. My wife and I drill each other using the cards and it is a nice change from the CD's.
3. Since Pimsleur does not systematically or comprehensively offer those specific phrases and nouns that tourists need (e.g., helpful travel phrases, helpful in-hotel phrases and objects like "pillow," "soap," etc.), as you go, put such phrases together on "Extra" 3x5 cards and commit them to memory. This is easy within the context of the Pimsleur method because you will already be learning how to put sentences together--one of Pimsleur's strengths.
4. Each lesson starts with a dialogue. After a few listenings, be sure to write the dialogue down in sequence so that you can read aloud along with the CD. This combination of aural and visual learning greatly enhances your ability to cope with the speed with which the speakers on the CD speak the language. I found at times that ther speed was so confusing it sounded like they were using words that had not yet been introduced or included in the lesson under consideration. However, once I figured out and wrote the dialogue down (using the forward/back buttons on my CD player to re-listen multiple times) it all came very clear and my ear improved dramatically.
5. Don't expect to learn each lesson after two or three listenings. We listen to the lessons at least 10 or 15 times each. We also, for the first few times through a new lesson, hit the pause button after being asked to translate a phrase from English into Italian in order to avoid the pressure resulting from the short space of time they give you to come up with the answer-translation. We found that we could, after a few listenings, dispense with the longer pause as we learned the phrases.
6. Finally, I suggest that you wait until you've learned all the lessons before bothering with the reading practice. You can do the reading at the end because the reading is not connected in any meaningful way to the lesson that precedes it. The reading is useful however, because it helps you to read and pronounce more accurately.
In summary, I'm very pleased with the Pimsleur approach and plan to buy and study Pimsleur II and III.
Incidentally, I called Pimsleur and asked them if they sold an addendum transcript booklet of the disks but was told that such a transcript flew in the face of their theoretical belief about how one should learn a language. While I don't agree, I admire their integrity. They could sell a ton of such transcript booklets if they so chose.
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22 of 23 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Learning and Living a Foreign Language, October 31, 2002
This review is from: Italian I : Pimsleur Comprehensive (Pimsleur CD Series) (Audio CD)
I bought all 3 German Pimsleurs when I moved to Germany a year ago. Within 6 months I was prattling away in Germans and people here didn't believe I didn't speak a word of it before I moved here.
Now I'm dating an Italian and have picked up this first Italian with every intention of going through the series. This is the best way to get a basic grasp of a language. Comfortably, in a way that makes you feel that you can speak and add vocabulary, rather than merely reciting set phrases like a trained monkey.
Would I do this if I was only a tourist? Don't know. My boyfriend is now using my German one (with me translating the commands into Italian from English) and he's thrilled that he's learning to understand and speak German. For me, Italian is my 6th language, but German is his first foreign language. It works. If you follow it, it works. It won't teach you everything, but it will teach you the framework you need for understanding how to parse and manipulate a language you are learning. I spent 5 years with French, 5 years with Russian and 2 years with Arabic in classrooms and NEVER ever felt as comfortable with those languages having only classroom grammar drills. Let's face it, you didn't learn your mother tongue in a grammar book, filling in worksheets. You learned it by people saying things to you and making you interact with them.
Pimsleur is more like teaching a man how to fish than feeding him a fish dinner... it all depends on what you want then, doesn't it?
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