World Famous Comics: Ultimate Italian Beginner-Intermediate (Book) (LL(R) Ultimate Basic-Intermed)
Ultimate Italian Beginner-Intermediate (Book) (LL(R) Ultimate Basic-Intermed)
By: Living Language Publisher: Living Language Average Rating: Binding: Paperback Label: Living Language Number of Items: 1 Number of Pages: 448 Publication Date: August 24, 2004 Release Date: August 24, 2004
Product Description: This deluxe course has everything you need to learn Italian from scratch or to revive the Italian that you learned years ago. Ultimate Italian combines conversation and culture in an easy-to-follow, enjoyable, and effective format. It’s the perfect way to learn Italian for school, for travel, for work, or for personal enrichment. In this book you’ll find:
• 40 lessons with lively dialogues including the most common and useful idiomatic expressions. • English translations and explanations of Italian grammar and usage, pronunciation, vocabulary, and culture notes. • Quizzes and review sections to check your progress. • A complete summary of Italian grammar, and verb charts covering all major tenses. • A section on letter writing for business or social occasions. • An extensive two-way glossary. • Up-to-date computer and Internet vocabulary, information on euros, and more!
Fairly good, but with some problems To my surprise, all other reviews are either five starts or just one star. In my opinion, the book falls somewhere in between, here are the pros and cons I find in it:
Positive + Compared to many other Italian courses, the grammar explanations are very extensive. "Italian in three months" leaves out many crucial parts of Italian grammar and both "Colloquial Italian" and "Teach Yourself Italian" present shorter and less structured grammar explanations. For grammar, this course is the best Italian course I've seen.
+ The course provides you with a rather large vocabulary, almost three times as many words as in "Italian in three months", slightly more than "Teach Yourself Italian" and about even with "Colloquial Italian".
+ Although a bit too short, the cultural points in each lesson are a nice add-on.
Negative - The main drawback is the lack of accentuation for word stress. Unlike Spanish and French, Italian stress is not fixed and needs to be learned. Every Italian course I've ever seen marks the stress in the vocabulary lists, but this course ignores it.
- Too many mistakes. As this isn't the first edition, I was surprised to find so many mistakes, both in grammar explanations and in translations. I have no problems spotting them, but a beginner would just be confused.
- Bad layout. Compared to the excellent and well-thought layout in "Italian in three months", this course feels far from user-friendly. It's a minor point compared to the others, but still something that could be improved.
All in all, a rather helpful book but with some problems that need to be addressed before I could give it four or five stars.
Best on the market This set will take you from a complete beginner to someone who can read, write and speak basic Italian. Well done and easy to follow. The cd set version has a lesson program that goes with the book and is very good, but short. I would recommend Living Language All Audio Italian. It follows the book also, but the lessons are complete and in depth. I have found that to be the best way to get the most from this book. I would highly recommend the Ultimate series to anyone wanting to learn a language. I have used many others and LL Ultimate is the best. If you want to learn Italian this is a great book to get you going. As always use the CD's to hear the language.
Italian class textbook I purchased this as a textbook for a local adult education class that I started taking this fall. Our instructor was using it and passing out photocopies of the lessons each week and I decided that it made much more sense to purchase the book. It is well written and easy enough to follow for a beginner student of Italian in a classroom setting. I was able to learn enough to use for a trip to Rome.
Very good beginning grammar I bought this to supplement three all-Italian texts used in the classroom. The explanations are clear and easy to understand, and the vocabulary is very useful. The book gives me an edge in the classroom when we have general conversation and when learning grammar in general.
Utterly and completely worthless This series of disks is nothing more than Italian words and names spoken ONLY IN ITALIAN. Because there are no English translations, it is almost impossible to learn even the most basic Italian from these disks.
Anything Goes Trivia
Megaton Man
Trevor
