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Rating: 
Summary: Hurray! Bravo! Adesso parlo l'italiano.
Review:
This tape series gives you a good idea of the Italian accent and pronunciation, which is its best feature. It is easy to listen to in the car, although you will find yourself rewinding the tape over and over again. Start rewinding each section from the start, and save yourself relistening to the entire tape. In about a month of non-disciplined listening and occasional reading, I mastered numbers (great for shopping, paying cabs, etc), basic reading of Italian, basic plurals, greetings, and a few other necessary concepts. The tapes are almost fun, and they do make learning easy as you repeat words over and over again in the car. As a previous reviewer mentioned, tape four and five have many repeated clips from the earlier tapes. Thus, you only get about 4.5 hours of instruction total. How much of a language can you pick up in four hours? I think that if this course focused solely on those words and phrases that a traveler would need, it would cover everything necessary for a short Italian getaway. However, this series covers days of the week, months of the year, seasons, etc. Most of these words won't be needed at restaurants, hotels, or galleries. This is NOT your ideal travel language set, and I have yet to discover what would be. There is a Berlitz guide that comes with a phrasebook, but it only has one cassette, and it rushes you through so much vocabulary (and skips half of the phrasebooks content while it does so). Good luck in your search! If all else fails, this series is a good start. Just don't expect to be fluent - or even come close!
Rating: 
Summary: Definitely for beginners - a minimum amount of vocabulary
Review:
This tape series gives you a good idea of the Italian accent and pronunciation, which is its best feature. It is easy to listen to in the car, although you will find yourself rewinding the tape over and over again. Start rewinding each section from the start, and save yourself relistening to the entire tape. In about a month of non-disciplined listening and occasional reading, I mastered numbers (great for shopping, paying cabs, etc), basic reading of Italian, basic plurals, greetings, and a few other necessary concepts. The tapes are almost fun, and they do make learning easy as you repeat words over and over again in the car. As a previous reviewer mentioned, tape four and five have many repeated clips from the earlier tapes. Thus, you only get about 4.5 hours of instruction total. How much of a language can you pick up in four hours? I think that if this course focused solely on those words and phrases that a traveler would need, it would cover everything necessary for a short Italian getaway. However, this series covers days of the week, months of the year, seasons, etc. Most of these words won't be needed at restaurants, hotels, or galleries. This is NOT your ideal travel language set, and I have yet to discover what would be. There is a Berlitz guide that comes with a phrasebook, but it only has one cassette, and it rushes you through so much vocabulary (and skips half of the phrasebooks content while it does so). Good luck in your search! If all else fails, this series is a good start. Just don't expect to be fluent - or even come close!
Rating: 
Summary: Frustrated
Review: Although I enjoyed listening to the Italian speaker and her dialogues with Mark, this course resulted in an inefficient use of my limited preparation time before heading for Italy. I agree with other reviewers that the rehashing on tapes 5 & 6 was a disappointment. But more frustrating was the fact that the "text" to which Mark repeatedly referred was a pamphlet that did not correspond,in terms of either page Nos.or tape Nos., to the audio materials. This meant I had to search for the tapes and pages that actually did correspond to material being presented on each tape. Most frustrating of all,when verb conjugation was presented, Mark referred several times to lists of verbs "in the back of the text" that listed tenses of various verbs. No such list was to be found anywhere in the text. I had to purchase another book to supplement Mark's pamphlet, and much time was wasted because the materials in this program were put together carelessly. I learned a lot of basics from the tapes, but the process was so frustrating that I wouldn't buy them again.
Rating:
Summary: Best Beginning Italian Course on the Market
Review: I agree with other language aficionados that it is nearly impossible to find a good solid foreign language course these days. What I mean by good is 'useful, fast, and easy to learn'. Audio Fluency Italian is by far the best basic Italian course I have yet to experience. It is enjoyable to learn from, and the basic sentences that you learn to form are useful anywhere you go. I especially enjoyed the review since it is impossible to learn a language without lots of repetition. The manual was good too. Lots of exercises, travel phrases (including restaurant which were also on the tapes) etc ...
Rating:
Summary: Hurray! Bravo! Adesso parlo l'italiano.
Review: I am a basket case when it comes to learning foreign languages. What is more, I am a klutz when it comes to looking up meanings.
When I bought Audio Fluency Italian I was immediately impressed with the fact that everything I needed was already on the tapes.
Please note that this is the only foreign language course I have ever tried that has been this complete. I was speaking simple sentences in Italian within the first hour of using this course
(Miracle). Actually there is no miracle. The English speaking instructor was fabulous and Anna the Italian speaker was very clear and helpful. Language Dynamics just came up with the easiest method, ecco tutto.
Rating:
Summary: Loved the repetition.
Review: I believe the one element that made Audio Fluency Italian so very effective for me was the proven technique of 'repetition'. Through the thorough, complete, and constant review of the practical basics taught in this excellent course, one has the hope of actually 'mastering' most of it. It certainly worked for me.
Rating:
Summary: Disappointed
Review: I enjyed the first four tapes in this six tape series. My disappointment came when I discovered that much of tape five and all of tape six were simply verbatim repetitions of earlier lessons. I felt cheated.
Rating:
Summary: Former U.S. Diplomat Says Real Communication Really Fast
Review: Language Dynamics courses are the only courses I know of that are truly dedicated to effective and immediate communication in the target language. Academic courses often reflect the literary interests of professors, many of whom never had the experience of learning the target language as a second language. With these courses, you can hit the streets after every lesson knowing you can say more than you could yesterday. Reviewer: An international business consultant and former US diplomat from the San Francisco Bay Area
Rating:
Summary: Awesome
Review: This is an excellent choice to learn beginners Italian. It really helped me get around.
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