Most helpful customer reviews
|
|
5.0 out of 5 stars
bravissimo, Mar 5 2004
By A Customer
Well, I give Pimsleur Italian (I, II, III) five stars because, for what it does, there is nothing else out there even close. The major pluses of the Pimsleur system: you can rather painlessly learn to speak and understand basic Italian with an absolute minimum of grammatical explanation and without ever so much as opening a book. Furthermore, you'll learn to speak with a good accent. (I actually had a native speaker compliment me on my accent; in fact, he expressed amazement at how good my accent and intonation were. Certainly gratifying to me, but Pimsleur deserves all the credit.) That is remarkable enough in itself, considering you're dealing with a set of tapes (or CD's), where you don't get to see the Italian speaker's lips move, ask questions about pronunciation (or anything else), or get coaching if you mispronounce. Of course, the series has its faults. Other reviewers have mentioned many of them. I would add the following. The pace can sometimes be erratic; some lessons tediously grind away with incessant repetition on the same topic, same words, same phrases, while others bombard you with a bunch of new words and expressions without a lot of practice. Overall, introduction of new grammar is too slow, especially for verbs. And then, of course, the essential contradiction of the entire method: you are always being given a phrase or sentence in English and asked to render it into Italian. What you really want to strive for is to be thinking (as well as speaking) in Italian, not translating English. You need to get the English out of your head and just have Italian in there. The part of each tape I enjoyed the most was all too brief: the introductory conversation in Italian at a brisk pace. These should be longer and more frequent in each lesson. I wanted to hear more Italian! Should the tapes be supplemented with books? It is not at all necessary in my view (here I disagree with other reviewers) but it can be helpful. I myself used Berlitz's "Essential Italian" which is packed with good stuff. Finally, don't think that you will be happily chattering away in Italian when you first set foot in Italy after having gone through the Pimsleur tapes. It will take you a while to get to that level. However, the Italians I encountered were remarkably polite and helpful with my rather tentative Italian (once I got them to stop trying to practice their English on me). And if you get outside the big cities and into the countryside and hamlets (as my wife and I did), you'll find in many cases your Italian is essential for getting along. (You'll be thanking Paul Pimsleur heartily after being in situations where non si parla affatto inglese). Secondly, although you won't be fluent, you WILL be able to make your way well enough, especially if you're trying to sign up for un corso di formazione professionale or need to ask what your Italian friend's nephew wants to do with his life now that he's finished his studies in Art History at the university. Seriously, though, the tapes do a very fine job in equipping you with the basics and indeed with a firm foundation. It's up to you to advance from there. Five stars.
|
|
|
5.0 out of 5 stars
Incomparable, Mar 3 2004
By A Customer
I have tried lots of other resources including other audio programs, and nothing comes close. The program is virtually effortless and amazingly effective. I wish there were more programs in the series. As for the cost, here is my timeshare salesman pitch: calculate the difference in the cost per hour between this program and some cheaper alternative and compare it to the hidden cost of wasting an hour of your time on a less effective program.
|
|
|
5.0 out of 5 stars
Caro, Ma Fantastico! (Expensive But Great!), Nov 1 2003
By A Customer
First, let's talk money. These are the most expensive home-learning language courses on the planet. But you can find them at greatly reduced prices if you shop around on the internet or buy them used. And even at full price, they're worth it. The lessons are ingeniously designed. There's no reading, no writing. You learn by listening and speaking. It's not so much a rote process as an installation. The language slowly but surely gets installed into you, so you start thinking in it, and listening to it without having to translate it into English to understand. I recently started Level III and am greatly satisfied. But I did find that I felt a need for some extra help with verbs, so I bought Italian Verb Drills, which is superb. Rather than blowing a lot of money and time traveling back and forth to an Italian language school to get to an intermediate level, I strongly recommend Pimsleur Levels I to III, Italian Verb Drills, a dictionary, and either 500 Italian Verbs or Teach Yourself Italian Verbs. I don't what I'll do after finishing Pimsleur III, but spero la fare en Italia.
|
|
|
Most recent customer reviews
|
