Rating: 
Summary: Makes an expensive divider for your Gerbil cage!
Review: This course is complete nonsense. You spend hours repeating syllables without any context to meaning, and learning about pronunciation. It's impossible to learn anything about Italian, much less have any fun. I'm angry I was tricked by their "you'll master grammer, pronunciation, vocabulary" blurb on the back of the package. There's no way to develop mastery with this boring, repetetive, overly structured system. It pauses every 30 seconds to say "information unit 576" or some such nonsense. If their were a law against poorly conceived programs being sold for high prices, Barron's would be in jail. Try Pimsleur's complete Italian I -- You'll actually learn Italian if you work through their three courses.
Rating:
Summary: Makes an expensive divider for your Gerbil cage!
Review: This course is complete nonsense. You spend hours repeating syllables without any context to meaning, and learning about pronunciation. It's impossible to learn anything about Italian, much less have any fun. I'm angry I was tricked by their "you'll master grammer, pronunciation, vocabulary" blurb on the back of the package. There's no way to develop mastery with this boring, repetetive, overly structured system. It pauses every 30 seconds to say "information unit 576" or some such nonsense. If their were a law against poorly conceived programs being sold for high prices, Barron's would be in jail. Try Pimsleur's complete Italian I -- You'll actually learn Italian if you work through their three courses.
Rating:
Summary: A rotten learning resource - a regrettable purchase
Review: This must have been developed for bureaucrats who enjoy rote learning without a shred of stimulation. Whenever I listen to it, the advancement from question to question is so miniscule that I am bored stiff after three pages. I have no idea how anyone could make it through all the cds (or tapes). Do you really need to know the syntactical name of the sounds you're learning to learn them (semi-vowels, etc.). You'd better be a nit-picking linguist to care even one bit about these lessons.
The tapes and book are interdependent. You can't take a break from the book and just listen to the tapes, and you can't take a break from the tapes and just read the book.
Worst of all, the use of the kit is utterly non-sensical. Fact after fact is recited for hundreds of pages. You just sit there staring at the book while schoolmarms recite the identical sentences you're reading. This might have been a good way to gain word recognition but all the Italian words are spelled out phonetically. (?!) With little warning as you're following along, a question is asked and the answer is alway sitting right in front of you. It's like team A in New York wrote the book and Team B (um... Alaska?) produced the tapes with no consideration for how one would enhance the other. Beyond that, the aesthetics of the book are a hoot! It's probably been 50 years since a book this ugly has been published in the U.S.. It has a font that could only be called "Utilitarian." Accents and punctuation marks are hand-drawn on the original manuscript.
You could maybe get through this course if it was the only activity you brought with you into a bomb-shelter before a very long war.
I regretted this purchase almost immediately and each successive attempt to get some value out of it has been exasperating. Spend eighty bucks on anything but this. This is teaching from a hundred unimaginative years ago. It's out of print for a very good reason.
Rating:
Summary: A rotten learning resource - a regrettable purchase
Review: This must have been developed for bureaucrats who mastered and prefer rote learning without a shred of imagination. Whenever I listen to it, the advancement from question to question is so miniscule that I am bored stiff after three pages. I have no idea how anyone could make it through all the cds (or tapes). Do you really need to know the syntactical name of the sounds you're learning to learn them (semi-vowels, etc.). You'd better be a nit-picking linguist to care even one bit about these lessons.The tapes and book are interdependent. You can't take a break from the book and just listen to the tapes, and you can't take a break from the tapes and just read the book. Worst of all, the book's use is utterly non-sensical. Fact after fact is recited for hundreds of pages. You just have to sit there and listen while lifeless schoolmarms recite the identical sentences you're already reading. This would have been a good idea for word recognition but the Italian words are spelled out phonetically (dur...!). With little warning as you're following along, a question is asked and the answer is alway right in front of you. It's like one team wrote the book and another made the tapes with no consideration for how they'd be used together. The aesthetics of the book are a hoot! It's been probably fifty years since a book this hideous has been published in the U.S., maybe more recently in Russia. It has a font that could only be called "Utilitarian." Accents and punctuation marks are hand-drawn on the orignal manuscript. Stimulation of any sort seems like it was resented. You could maybe get through it if it was the only book you brought with you into a bomb-shelter before a very long war. It takes a lifeless state-employed drone to produce a tool this bewilderingly idiotic. I regretted this purchase almost immediately and each succesive attempt to use the book is equally frustrating. Spend a hundred bucks on anything but this. This is teaching from a hundred unimaginative years ago. It's out of print for a very good reason.
Rating:
Summary: A Horrible Italian book
Review: This system concentrates to much on the pronunciation and inflection of every word. And every inflection has a name. By chapter 3, I was so confused by all of the names for the inflections I kept forgetting what the lesson was supposed to be about. If you want to learn Italian in a simple fashion I do not recommend these books/cassettes.
Rating:
Summary: A strain on my ear
Review: This system concentrates to much on the pronunciation and inflection of every word. And every inflection has a name. By chapter 3, I was so confused by all of the names for the inflections I kept forgetting what the lesson was supposed to be about. If you want to learn Italian in a simple fashion I do not recommend these books/cassettes.
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