Customer Reviews

Learn Italian the Fast and Fun Way with Book

5 star:		(17)
4 star:		(12)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

This is broken down really well for you and is basically part book- part workbook. There are plenty of activities to take part in to help you learn this language. However it doesn't get a five because it doesn't come with a tape, though 4 are available to go with it for over 30 dollars. Also, you only learn present and imperative tenses, which may have been more complicated to learn but it should be in there if you want to concern yourself with it. It is really informative and amusing and holds your attention. It does this by keeping the lessons quick and to the point with a little humor here and there. Remember that Learning Italian and learning Italian for sake of a quick bout of tourism ''just enough'' to get by... very different things. As for just the bout of tourism, this is more than enough to get you by and would work great. As for grasping the whole language, if you really feel you need to... you'd not only need the past tense and so on, but you'd definetely need alot of cassettes for example and the ability to read whole paragraphs with ease. This won't get you there, but it'll teach you the basic language.

This book is colorful, but you really need to purchase the book as part of the set with the tapes so that you are able to hear the correct pronunciations. The book and tapes cover the basics for people who are planning to travel to Italy for vacation, and it starts from the very beginning with pronunciations and greetings. There are places in the book for you to practice your Italian writing skills without "drilling" you to sleep. There are puzzle games in the book, as well. The book covers basic grammar and basic vocabularly.

I ordered this for an adult continuing education class that I am taking - Beginning Italian. This is truly a fun book - much better than the old French textbooks I had in high school. It is well illustrated, words are spelled phonetically, and it moves at an nice pace (not too elementary, but also not too challenging.) There are no audio tapes, but I have the advantage of a weekly class with an Italian instructor who is from Italy. The book comes with some flash cards and a small dictionary. The list price is $18.95, but Amazon sells it for less.

The audio CD's are a good complement to the text. But for a 288 page book, you think they could teach you more than the present tense! Ok, they teach the imperative (eg. command) tense, but that's it. Nothing about the simple past or future. Just listen to yourself talk for 5 minutes and think about how hard it is to keep it ALL in the present tense.

I ordered this book for a class my husband and I are taking through our local community enrichment programs. The CDs really help, to give us practice in speaking Italian during the week between our classes. The book itself is very clear and presents important concepts for the beginner. However, I have found the book a bit difficult to work with. It is hard to find specific items, be they verbs or idioms, within the book. Basically, I would say that the book is not "user-friendly," in our current vernacular. However, there is a lot of good material in the book.

This book was used as the text for a "Conversational Italian" class I took. There are a quite a few small errors in the book, typos and such, which the teacher was aware of. (Nothing that will get you in trouble, but be aware!) Its big selling point is that it is mostly aimed at tourists, making it a good choice for people whose main purpose in learning Italian is to get along while traveling.

We are studying Italian with a teacher via SKYPE and this is our workbook. It's a good basic text and we are learning. Both my husband I feel that there is not enough dialogue in it and it takes awhile to get around to verbs. We both wish there were more everyday phrases earlier in the book. The pull-out dictionary is fairly sparse, but it's also thin and easy to carry around. It's probably as good as most language usage books get and I would not hesitate to tell someone to purchase it if they also had another source such as a language teacher or disc so that the spoken language could be heard, too.

We've used a different CD based system for French & this book/CD set "Learn Italian the Fast and Fun Way by Marcel Danesi & Barron's is FAR BETTER. It's simple to follow. I think the CD only systems are too difficult to follow & you need something in print that follows audio. This book is the coursework for a Italian class we're taking by a native of Italy & she said it's 99% correct.

The book is excellent in teaching the pronounciation of Italian and the proper usage of word endings. I would also recomend the CD that comes with the book so you can hear the words that are covered in each lesson.

This is a good book to use as a starting point. It covers some common phrases, grammar, and vocabulary. There is enough repetition of what you have learned in previous chapters to help you retain it. The 4-CD set is wonderful as a pronounciation help. The book is nicely organized into 29 well-planned lessons that take about an hour and a half each. Very nice way to begin learning this charming language.