Teach Yourself Italian Complete Course(book and CD pack) (Teach Yourself Language Complete Courses)

Rating:
Summary: Will have you speaking Italian in no time
Review: I am in an Italian club at school, and we use this book. At the meetings, we listen to the great example dialogues and repeat them ourselves in English, and/or practice them in Italian. If you read over the chapters and listen to the dialogues and practice speaking with your friends, you will definitely pick up plenty of Italian. This book teaches very systematically, lets you really absorb the information, and does not overload you with memorization. This is a wonderful book, I love learning Italian from it. It is incredibly easy and fun. I encourage all prospective self-teachers of Italian to buy this book. You could start an Italian club at YOUR school!

Rating:
Summary: It's alright.. but still tough to learn
Review: I'm of 100% italian descent and live in toronto but have always as a child refused to speak italian with family members.. But obviously, if i needed to, i knew how to get by in italian since i was surrounded by the language 24-7. But, I recently became unhappy with my inability to say i can understand two languages because my italian and french are on the border lines.. anyways, I got this book. This book is a very good one as I have gone through about half of it, but people who buy these types of books without any prior knowledge of the language are just kidding themselves if they think it'll make them proficient in italian. If the purpose is to just get by on a two week vacation, I think this'll help tremendously as it goes through many easy sayings such as 'excuse me sir, what time is it' and 'where's the beef?'. ok, i'm kidding about the last one! but the best way to learn languages is take actual courses at universities where you speak and practice with others on the same level. This book may be helpful in that situation if you use it while taking an actual course. But, through whichever method you choose, or purpose(mine being work in italy since i have citizenship already) I believe everyone should learn italian because it's a beautiful language. ciao

Rating:
Summary: A great way to learn "la lingua d'Italia"
Review: This is an excellent course for the money. I have used other books in this series for my travels (German, Chinese, Spanish, Finnish, and Japanese) and have found each series extremely helpful. One aspect that I enjoy is that the course doesn't "coddle" you; it introduces something and expects you to use it from there on out. This is very useful for me since I am highly motivated to learn the language, but perhaps not as much for someone who is intimidated by the learning process. The tapes are excellent and the pronunciation very helpful, although I wish they would include more of the dialogues on the tapes. There is a large blank space on the second side of the first tape that could have been used for more dialogues. I would also recommend the grammar, vocabulary, and verb books by "Teach Yourself". The three are inexpensive and collectively provide you with some powerful tools to better learn Italian. The activities provided at the end of each chapter are very helpful, although I would also like to see more provided in future editions. It is always desirable to have opportunities to practice what you have learned, and the more the better. I am certain that anyone who purchases this series will be well pleased and, having used my new skills in Italy with native speakers, I can say that the program prepared me quite well. Buona fortuna!