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Rating: 
Summary: Very entertaining!
Review: If you are at least at an intermediate-level student of Italian, you will have tons of fun listening to these tapes! This is a continuing story about the adventures (and misadventures!) of an Italian engineer who is transferred from Italy to Lausanne, Switzerland. The dialogue is very funny and the actors are native Italians who are very easy to understand. The expressions they use are typical of those found in everyday Italian conversation. The set consists of four 60-minute tapes and two books. The "Listening Guide" consists of transcripts of the dialogues (all in Italian); the "Handbook" consists of notes on vocabulary, language, grammar, etc. with explanations in English. I enjoy playing the tapes over and over. If you cannot be in a "total immersion" environment, such as studying in Italy, it's tape sets such as this one that let you create your own "total immersion" environment.
Rating:
Summary: Very entertaining!
Review: If you are at least at an intermediate-level student of Italian, you will have tons of fun listening to these tapes! This is a continuing story about the adventures (and misadventures!) of an Italian engineer who is transferred from Italy to Lausanne, Switzerland. The dialogue is very funny and the actors are native Italians who are very easy to understand. The expressions they use are typical of those found in everyday Italian conversation. The set consists of four 60-minute tapes and two books. The "Listening Guide" consists of transcripts of the dialogues (all in Italian); the "Handbook" consists of notes on vocabulary, language, grammar, etc. with explanations in English. I enjoy playing the tapes over and over. If you cannot be in a "total immersion" environment, such as studying in Italy, it's tape sets such as this one that let you create your own "total immersion" environment.
Rating:
Summary: Best Yet
Review: This is a great course - so naturally, it's no longer available. Find it used and buy it! Like the other reviews state, it's fun, believable and you don't get tired of the story/dialogs even over and over again. It's ALL Italian on the tapes. Not a parola of english. Yet every single word is translated in the listening guide. A non-native Italian guide takes you through the course between the dialogs and is very easy to understand since she/he(?) has an accent (Italian obviously not being her/his first language (You tell me whether she's a man or women - I can't tell...). Throw one of these tapes in the car and just keep playing. Then at home check the listening guide. "Oh that's what they're saying here..." etc. Then next time in the car you hear it. Then there's a separate handbook that goes over all the idioms and expressions of the dialogs - very nice. Between dialogs on the tapes, are great exercises to do in the car. Again, every word is in Italian and found in the listening guide. Again, check at home and next time in the car it all makes sense. This is the best Italian course I've found. Another must have car tape (3 tapes and booklet) is AUTO ITALIAN ADVANCED by Barron's. Get that one as well. Same deal, all Italian and all translated in the book. And the dialogs aren't boring like Pimsleur where it sounds like two natives sitting at a table in front of two microphones reading off a sheet of paper. These are instead, real people engaged in real conversations of life and you never think it's staged at all. Great.
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