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Teach Yourself Beginner's Italian - Book/2 CD Pack

By: Vittoria Bowles
Binding: Paperback
Publisher: Teach Yourself Books
ISBN: 0340870125
ISBN-13: 9780340870129
Released: 30 Oct 2003
RRP: £21.99
Average Rating:

Customer Reviews

Disappointing - By: Richie M, 11 Apr 2005
(argh! my long detailed review just got wiped! here's a summary):

- Double CD & book set seem the biz when you first open it
- Begins well, native speakers & fun to use
- Soon find out that CDs & book usuallly sold seperately, & therefore both are often out of sync & oddly incompatible
- Runs away with itself & get far too messy & difficult far too quickly
- You can only learn set phrases
- There is no opportunity for you to concuct your own sentences or explore different ways of conversing
- Grammer is virtuallly non-existent, verbs & their conjugations are never explained, leaving you with pointless random phrases that will crumble if a native doesn't follow the conversation the way you learned it

- Stay well clear, there are better courses out there

Not Great - By: Richie M, 11 Apr 2005
I have a huge interest in Italy & am very eager to learn Italian to make my visits there more enjoyable, so I bought this 2-CD & Book set as it looked comprehensive enough to get me on my way to learning the language.
Since I am currently in college, I have experience in learning languages fresh in my mind, & am used to the institutional method of equal vocab/grammer/oral/aurual work, etc. Buying this set was my first attempt at home learning, & I didn't know what to expect.

Skimming through the materials, I got excited. I immediately started & throughly enjoyed the first chapter, where I was intoduced to the standard hellos/goodbyes/thank yous, etc. I was looking forward to the rest of the course.
However, I quickly discovered the book & the audio CDs were oddly quite incompatible, & soon learned they are more commonly sold seperately. This means having to skim back & forth to find dialogues & vocab & generallly getting muddled. This is especiallly true given that the difficulty increases exponentiallly after the second chapter.
This could be bearable if it wasn't for the awful layout of the book. Grammer is virtuallly non-existent, & you must learn sentences & phrases off by heart in order to proceed, but you are never given a chance to form your own sentences, nor are you given explanations as to why verbs are conjugated the way they are.

This set is seriously flawed, & is no more than a basic audio phrasebook. If conversation even slightly veers off the norm, you're pretty much screwed. Very disappointing - I've given up & am going to try another language course. Stay clear, I'm sure there are better sets out there...