Speak in a Week Italian Complete: See, Hear, Say & Learn [Audio CD]

Inc Penton Overseas (Author), Rosamaria Ruggeri (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: July 2005 | ISBN-10: 1591255481 | ISBN-13: 978-1591255482 | Edition: Com/Har

In four 240-page spiral bound books of eight sections apiece, you get a comprehensive overview of grammar, plus nearly 70 pages of vocabulary. The thirty-one colourful, illustrated lessons, a comprehensive review, and detailed glossaries provide all the basic tools to learn another language. Each page features the target language on one side and English on the reverse, with an illustration providing the visual clues and memory hooks to increase speed of comprehension, plus extra grammar tips, helpful hints, and cultural insights to enrich your learning experience. An Audio CD provides native pronunciation of all material presented plus Mastery Exercises for comprehensive review.

Product Details

• Audio CD
• Publisher: Penton Overseas; Com/Har edition (July 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1591255481
• ISBN-13: 978-1591255482
• Product Dimensions: 6.7 x 6.3 x 4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 3.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #629,160 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #32 in Books > Books on CD > Languages > Language Instruction > Italian

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Wierd voice / wierd accent, May 10, 2008

By 

S. A. Ziegler (Hermosa Beach, CA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Speak in a Week Italian Complete: See, Hear, Say & Learn (Audio CD)

I have the Speak in a Week French, which I love.

So, I decided to buy the Italian. I'm not enjoying it at all. The voice of the woman speaking Italian is very high and very sort of pinched, almost like it has been slightly sped up. In addition, she mispronounces a lot of words. Like, "Dov'è... which means "Where is..." is pronounced "'DOH-veh" but she mispronounces it like, "'DOO-vay", like the French word for quilt cover "duvet". But then in the next chapter, she pronounces it correctly as "'DOH-veh" Why would she mispronounce it in one chapter and then pronounce it correctly in another? This makes me think that she is not actually Italian.

The purpose of these CDs is to go through it with the book and then have it playing so that you can get the sound of the language from a native speaker in your ear, but when it's mispronounced, it defeats the whole purpose!

In addition, many times the pronunciation they have written down phonetically is wrong so I have to look it up in my Italian book to see who's right: Her pronunciation or the book's pronunciation...

Example: Pg 49, the Italian sentence reads: Dov'è la scrivania?" (Where is the desk?) She speaks, "'DOO-vay [wrong] lah scree-vah-'NEE-ah [right], but the pronunciation in the book says, "dohv-EH [right] lah skree-'VAH-nyah" [wrong]. I had to get my Italian book out with IPA to decide who to follow; the woman's voice or the book, and they were both wrong.... oh my God...

What a waste of time!

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Super language learning series, May 12, 2007

By 

Carlyle Mallory (Chesapeake, OH USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Speak in a Week Italian Complete: See, Hear, Say & Learn (Audio CD)

This series on learning Italian follows in the admirable footsteps of the series on learning Spanish. Penton Overseas has got a winning formula for teaching languages. I purchased the Spanish series and was so impressed that I decided to obtain other Penton Speak in a Week series i.e. French, Chinese, and Italian. I just wish the German series was available in a four book/volume set. At the present time I am dual learning both Spanish and Italian as there is a great amount of similarities in both languages.

Anyone interested in learning a new language or brushing up on a language (my Spanish was learned 40 years ago), would be well advised to invest the time an money in purchasing these excellent language series.

2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars phrases are not helpful, didn't like at all compared to others, August 23, 2007

By 

Ms. Linda Patterson - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Speak in a Week Italian Complete: See, Hear, Say & Learn (Audio CD)

I learned to speak Italian in my car before my last trip and wanted to learn more, especially since I changed cars and needed CD's instead of tapes. These phrases were so silly and so useless that I quicly lost interest. "I like your hat" I didn't think that the CD's were helpful, I didn't like the way they taught you and for the price, I expected a whole lot more. I was really sorry that I bought these.
My other tapes were cheap but excellent. I should have returned this item.
Get something else......