Mastering Italian: with 15 Compact Discs (Mastering Series: Level 1 CD Packages) [Audio CD]

Foreign Service Language Institute (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0812078675 | ISBN-13: 978-0812078671 | Publication Date: March 13, 1992

These intensive programs are complete language immersion courses, and were created by the federal agency that trains U.S. government personnel in foreign language proficiency. They start with grammar and vocabulary basics, then bring students to proficiency in reading, writing, speaking, and listening comprehension. This program contains a grammar textbook plus fifteen compact discs.

Product Details

• Audio CD
• Publisher: Barron's Educational Series (March 13, 1992)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0812078675
• ISBN-13: 978-0812078671
• Product Dimensions: 10.2 x 9.9 x 2.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 3.4 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 1.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (14 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #623,650 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

23 of 25 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Ugly but thorough., November 29, 2003

By 

Eds Word (El Paso, Texas United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Mastering Italian: with 15 Compact Discs (Mastering Series: Level 1 CD Packages) (Audio CD)

The instruction in this course, particularly in the beginning, borders on the awful. It makes learning Italian much harder than it needs to be. The use of phonetic symbols, albeit relatively infrequent, was totally unnecessary. On the plus side there is a lot of audio (15 CDs) and the course is very thorough in teaching pronunciation. Living Language and Pimsleur offer better instruction but far less audio. "Mastering Italian" is also fairly decent as a stand-alone course. Purchase this course only if you are patient and want to slowly be walked through learning Italian. It does get easier the further you progress. After completing this course you'll know more Italian than you would have with other comparably priced courses but may wonder if it would have been more worthwhile to have shelled out the additional money for other courses and not have had to struggled so much. Since this course had been developed for diplomats it is intended for serious students of the language. Tourists wanting to learn Italian should go with Berlitz or some of the other phrasebook-type audio courses for travelers. The CDs are not suitable for use while driving and are designed to be used simultaneously with the textbook.

"Mastering Italian" diverges quite a bit from the usual audio-lingual format found in Barron's "Mastering French," "Mastering German," or "Mastering Korean" series. It has less emphasis on drills and more on the technical aspects of pronunciation (e.g. tongue flaps, intonation patterns, etc). The Pimsleur courses totally ignore these technical aspects yet are far more effective in teaching natural pronunciation. This is an ugly course but it clears the hurdle for three stars because it is very thorough.

20 of 23 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Don't waste your money or your time, February 12, 2006

By 

Polly Glot "Student and Teacher" (Long Island, NY) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Mastering Italian: with 15 Compact Discs (Mastering Series: Level 1 CD Packages) (Audio CD)

As a professional linguist, I have devoted a great deal of time to learning, teaching, and using foreign languages and I can sincerely tell you that this Barron's series is a complete waste of time. As a matter of fact, I gave it one star because that is the only way I could write this review. My fiance (who is also a professional linguist) and I purchased this series in order to learn Italian in anticipation of our honeymoon in Italy this spring. We bought this yesterday and will be returning it tomorrow for the Pimsleur course. The audio lessons focus too keenly on pronunciation (WHAT is this Vowel 70 nonsense all about anyway?!) and the accompanying textbook did little to overcome my dissatisfaction. The lessons are poorly developed and presented in both the audio and the text, and the use of phonetic letters in the text is distracting, unnecessary and extremely annoying. The program promises to teach you to "Hear it, Speak it, Write it, Read it", but it never develops a foundation from which to build comprehension and worse yet, it doesn't have a single page written in proper Italian characters!


I do agree with the reviewers who emphasize the importance of pronunciation and precision when speaking a langauge, but this series spends too much time on that single aspect and not nearly enough time teaching you the living language. There are better and more effective ways to demonstrate, teach, and learn proper pronunciation without killing the enthusiasm of a new student and complicating the fairly simple and (fun) matter of learning a new langauge!


If you are truly a serious student of Italian or of ANY langauge, then you (should) know that practicing vowel sounds for hours without any context will not make you better at the langauge, nor will that make it easier to learn. To suggest that this course (and its over emphasis on pronunciation) is the best thing to happen to learning a language is to completely ignore the effect of dialect in a living language. Fluency and your ability to understand and to be understood when speaking will come only with experience and exposure to the langauge.


If you want to learn Italian, you will do better to spend your money on another series (and I recommend Pimsleur), get some of those workbooks (Barron's has a good one, although it is not in this set) to introduce you to grammar and vocabulary, and then go and rent some Italian movies (if your local Blockbuster of Hollywood Video doesn't have any, try Netflix - they have a fantastic selection of foreign films!) You'll get LOTS of langauge - and plenty that isn't covered in ANY language series (except those "Street Slang" ones)!

14 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Nothing like the other FSI courses!, January 4, 2006

By 

Nigel (Texas) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Mastering Italian: with 15 Compact Discs (Mastering Series: Level 1 CD Packages) (Audio CD)

This course is very poor compared to the other wonderful FSI language courses. I would not recommend this to a person wanting to learn Italian as that's exactly what you don't do with this course! I have other Barron's FSI courses and even some of the additional levels to the French course from other sources, and they are all fantastic.

The course being presented here is "Programmatic". I have Mastering Portuguese and although it shares a similar approach to "programmed" learning, you can actually learn something from that course. When I first looked at Mastering Italian I assumed it would stop with the intonation patterns and get some dialogues after a few lessons; I was wrong. Not only does the entire course seem to be based upon intonation patterns, but it strays from even showing real Italian text and uses its own writing system which you have to learn! This seems to be the only FSI lemon out there, but is sure is bad.

If you really want to learn Italian, take a look at the Assimil, Pimsleur, Linguaphone (available mostly in the U.K.) and Michel Thomas courses.