Home :: Books :: Audio CDs  

Arts & Photography
Audio CDs

Audiocassettes
Biographies & Memoirs
Business & Investing
Children's Books
Christianity
Comics & Graphic Novels
Computers & Internet
Cooking, Food & Wine
Entertainment
Gay & Lesbian
Health, Mind & Body
History
Home & Garden
Horror
Literature & Fiction
Mystery & Thrillers
Nonfiction
Outdoors & Nature
Parenting & Families
Professional & Technical
Reference
Religion & Spirituality
Romance
Science
Science Fiction & Fantasy
Sports
Teens
Travel
Women's Fiction
Italian: Level 1

Italian: Level 1

List Price: $19.95
Your Price: $13.57
Product Info Reviews

<< 1 >>

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: A great & easy way to learn Italian!
Review: Had this set of 3 cd's & book for 2-3 weeks. Listening to it on the way to work & back, turns a long & tedious commute, into a fun & interesting endeavor. I now bring my portable cd player, so I can still hear Vivaldi in the background while learning to speak Italian. Once I get to my destination, I can quickly go over the lesson in the book to better understand the spelling of the words & language rules. This is such an easy way of learning a foreign language, I will try the French lessons after this. E Grande!

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: A great & easy way to learn Italian!
Review: Had this set of 3 cd's & book for 2-3 weeks. Listening to it on the way to work & back, turns a long & tedious commute, into a fun & interesting endeavor. I now bring my portable cd player, so I can still hear Vivaldi in the background while learning to speak Italian. Once I get to my destination, I can quickly go over the lesson in the book to better understand the spelling of the words & language rules. This is such an easy way of learning a foreign language, I will try the French lessons after this. E Grande!

Rating: 2 stars
Summary: What is going on??
Review: I am going to Italy for my honeymoon in two months and am so excited I decided I should learn some of the language, so I can really get into the vacation. I also commute far to work so this sounded ideal, however, I have no idea what is going on during these cds. A man randomly says words and a woman says them in Italian... I don't learn like that at all (does anyone?). Are we really supposed to just memorize every single word on these cds from hearing someone say them in Italian, without any instruction on the logic of conjugations, pluralization, etc.? It is such rote memorization, totally not for me. I remember like three words, don't ask me to put them into a sentence! I have only listened to the first cd, so the other two may be different, but its pretty telling in and of iteself that someone as eager as I am to learn the language can't bear to listen to all the cds! They are so useless. If you learn by hearing, and have a fantastic memory that requires no understanding of logic, this is for you.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Learn Italian in your Car CD by Henry Raymond
Review: I am really learning a lot from this 3cd set. The car is a great place to practice in private. It's the first time I haven't felt self conscious about trying to speak another language. The book helps to preview each lesson. I like the CD format so a lesson can be easily chosen for review. When will Level II on CD be available??

Rating: 2 stars
Summary: Where did they get this anouncer from ??
Review: The package says "Prepared by dialect-free professionals"... What they should also have insisted on is they be NATIVE Italian speakers too! Listening to the female do the Italian part gave me an uneasy feeling... I kept asking myself "is her pronunciation right?" For example, every beginner knows "Io voglio" is pronounced "ee-yo volyo"... but the speaker here kept saying "ee-yo VOY-yo" (wish no "l" sound). Drove me crazy to listen to her mispronounce it over and over!

At other times, it sounded as if she was just learning the proper pronunciation (in other words, as if they took someone who knows nothing about Italian and has them practice a word a few times, then reads that word aloud). How did they expect people to learn the correct pronunciation like this??

The other less severe complaint I have is that they should have steered away from "travelers vocabulary" and instead focussed on what most other programs don't, that is normal BASIC speaking which is what grammer is built upon. I know most people who take couses do it because of travel, but there are tons of specific travelers leanguage pograms already available. How about a program with vocabulary NOT used for travel? I'm tired of refrences like "customs office". The package implys the method used here is how a child learns.. well that may be true, but I doubt children focus on travel terms.

Overall, good idea but he speaker's pronunciation wasn't good enough.

Rating: 2 stars
Summary: Where did they get this anouncer from ??
Review: The package says "Prepared by dialect-free professionals"... What they should also have insisted on is they be NATIVE Italian speakers too! Listening to the female do the Italian part gave me an uneasy feeling... I kept asking myself "is her pronunciation right?" For example, every beginner knows "Io voglio" is pronounced "ee-yo volyo"... but the speaker here kept saying "ee-yo VOY-yo" (wish no "l" sound). Drove me crazy to listen to her mispronounce it over and over!

At other times, it sounded as if she was just learning the proper pronunciation (in other words, as if they took someone who knows nothing about Italian and has them practice a word a few times, then reads that word aloud). How did they expect people to learn the correct pronunciation like this??

The other less severe complaint I have is that they should have steered away from "travelers vocabulary" and instead focussed on what most other programs don't, that is normal BASIC speaking which is what grammer is built upon. I know most people who take couses do it because of travel, but there are tons of specific travelers leanguage pograms already available. How about a program with vocabulary NOT used for travel? I'm tired of refrences like "customs office". The package implys the method used here is how a child learns.. well that may be true, but I doubt children focus on travel terms.

Overall, good idea but he speaker's pronunciation wasn't good enough.


<< 1 >>

© 2004, ReviewFocus or its affiliates