27 of 27 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Fairly good, but with some problems, October 22, 2008
This review is from: Ultimate Italian Beginner-Intermediate (Book) (Ultimate Beginner-Intermediate) (Paperback)
To my surprise, all other reviews are either five starts or just one star. In my opinion, the book falls somewhere in between, here are the pros and cons I find in it:
Positive
+ Compared to many other Italian courses, the grammar explanations are very extensive. "Italian in three months" leaves out many crucial parts of Italian grammar and both "Colloquial Italian" and "Teach Yourself Italian" present shorter and less structured grammar explanations. For grammar, this course is the best Italian course I've seen.
+ The course provides you with a rather large vocabulary, almost three times as many words as in "Italian in three months", slightly more than "Teach Yourself Italian" and about even with "Colloquial Italian".
+ Although a bit too short, the cultural points in each lesson are a nice add-on.
Negative
- The main drawback is the lack of accentuation for word stress. Unlike Spanish and French, Italian stress is not fixed and needs to be learned. Every Italian course I've ever seen marks the stress in the vocabulary lists, but this course ignores it.
- Too many mistakes. As this isn't the first edition, I was surprised to find so many mistakes, both in grammar explanations and in translations. I have no problems spotting them, but a beginner would just be confused.
- Bad layout. Compared to the excellent and well-thought layout in "Italian in three months", this course feels far from user-friendly. It's a minor point compared to the others, but still something that could be improved.
All in all, a rather helpful book but with some problems that need to be addressed before I could give it four or five stars.
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6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Best on the market, February 7, 2008
This review is from: Ultimate Italian Beginner-Intermediate (Book) (Ultimate Beginner-Intermediate) (Paperback)
This set will take you from a complete beginner to someone who can read, write and speak basic Italian. Well done and easy to follow. The cd set version has a lesson program that goes with the book and is very good, but short. I would recommend Living Language All Audio Italian. It follows the book also, but the lessons are complete and in depth. I have found that to be the best way to get the most from this book. I would highly recommend the Ultimate series to anyone wanting to learn a language. I have used many others and LL Ultimate is the best. If you want to learn Italian this is a great book to get you going. As always use the CD's to hear the language.
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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Great for Independent Learners, January 3, 2009
This review is from: Ultimate Italian Beginner-Intermediate (Book) (Ultimate Beginner-Intermediate) (Paperback)
This is a great course if you are seriously studying Italian on your own. It is very thorough and has all the grammar of a first year college level progam. The CD's and conversational Italian are intelligent and useful for travel, shopping and everyday situations. There are only 5 questions for each grammar principle. If you are a serious learner, you may need a grammar and verb workbook to complement this book for serious study. If you are just traveling to Italy or pick up principles fast you don't need anything else.
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