Oggi in Italia: A First Course in Italian

Rating:
Summary: il peggiore
Review: I completely agree with Erickson's review. I have just finished two semesters using this book. I can't say enough bad things about it. If you get suckered into a course that uses this book I recommend that you immediately go out and buy/use the following:
1. Shaum's Italian Grammar
2. 501 Italian Verbs
3. Italian Verbs and Essentials of Grammar
4. English Grammar for Students of Italian

Anyone that gives this Oggi in Italia a good review must be on the payroll of the publisher/author.

Rating:
Summary: Che Peccatto!
Review: I have been using this book as a part of a series of beginning to intermediate level Italian. While the book does an adequate job in some areas, it leaves a lot to be desired. For example, the glossary doesn't contain many of the words used in the book. There are exercise which use words that have not been learned and which are not in the dictionary. The vocabulary in each chapter is somewhat arranged by topic, but is incomplete and confusing. The book is designed to follow as a sort of episodic course, but it is a horrible reference book, and concepts like verb tenses are separated by pages and sometimes over several chapters.

It is unfortunate that this seems to be the seminal textbook for Italian. It does the job, but surely there must be something better out there.

Rating:
Summary: Minestrone
Review: This text is a soupy mixture of chunks of material. It follows the annoying trend in language books toward using words and grammatical concepts in exercises before they are introduced and explained. It also still has a number of typos even after several editions. More serious problems are the flat out grammatical usage errors that emerge in the later chapters. The whole subject of accent marks is poorly addressed nor are the verbs (-rre verbs), that contradict the statement that only three endings are possible, ever explained. I also object to the practise of frequently issuing new editions which are superficially modified to sell new books but do not correct or improve the text in any meaningful manner. Teachers please pass on using this textbook!