Italian With Ease (Assimil Language Learning Programs - Book and CD Edition Paperback – January 1, 1997

I have taken 2 years of Italian courses in a classroom setting and have mastered all the basics, but I wanted to learn more. I can hold basic conversations with Italians, however before starting Assimil, the words didn't come to my head like I wanted. I've come to the conclusion that in order to be fluent in Italian, I'd have to teach myself.I purchased Assimil a month ago and I am very happy with the results thus far. It is a completely different learning approach. I no longer have to rely on memorizing and conjugating verbs like I do in class. If you see a strange word in one lesson and forget it, it will most certainly come back to you many times and little by little it will stick in your mind. In a month I've acquired TONS of vocabulary and they come to me right away since I've learned them in context. Verbs are also very easily learned (especially those tricky irregular ones!).What I love the most about this program is that real-life situations come into play: job interviews, informal chats with friends, going to a hotel, sight seeing, traveling by train and air...I can go on and on. Bottom line: there are many situations that you will come across in real life that you will see in this book. Many of the dialogs are very enjoyable and memorable.As I have mentioned, I've only had this program for a month and I feel that it has been completely worth every cent so far. I'm in lesson 30 and I've learned many new expressions and words. When I talk to Italians words come to me very naturally. I look forward to the coming lessons. Without a doubt I recommend Assimil Italian!

First: I had no problem downloading the CD's onto my computer and further onto my mp3 player.Second: the copyright of the book is 1991. It's sadly out of date. Prices in conversational dialogues are given in lire, not euros. One conversation involves going to the telephone store to make a long distance call; whereas, everyone today has a cell phone. Those are just two examples.Third: this method is great for those who already know a Romance language; and therefore are familiar with basic verb conjugations, sentence order, common grammar rules, etc. In this method, you jump right into the deep end. If you're new to language learning, it would be better to put out the extra bucks and go with something like Rosetta Stone.I still give it 4 stars because I think it's a relatively rapid way to learn Italian for those with a background in foreign languages and good motivation to learn.

This course is unlike any other language course that I have tried. Each lesson is very short -- just a short dialogue, with Italian on one page and English on the facing page. Followed by this are usually one or two very short exercises, one which is just translation from Italian-English, and one which is fill in the blanks translation from English to Italian. Again, the answers are on the facing face. So each lesson is only a couple of pages long (and the book is tiny, only about 4x6.5 inches). In 400 pages, there are 105 lessons!There is almost no grammatical explanation, which is very ok if you already have some basic background in Italian. So if you took Italian in high school years ago, or studied a little with another book, this is good to use. The real strength of the book is the audio. All the dialogues and Italian-English exercises are on the audio, and they speak at normal speed (which is to say, fast!). I listen to the dialogues first, several times, then go to the book and read them to catch what I didn't get on the audio, and to learn what the new words mean. Each audio lesson is about a minute and a half long, maybe two minutes, and includes no English at all -- nothing but the Italian text.All the dialogues are transcribed into a rough phonetic transcription in very tiny print in footnotes. So a word like paura 'fear' is transcribed "paaawuuuura". Not exactly scientific phonetic transcriptions, but that is ok. Occasionally they are helpful. Much more helpful is the fact that the words in the dialogue indicate stress -- the stressed syllable is in bold.There are also some very short notes with the dialogues (like footnotes) that may explain a point of grammar or an idiom. These are not usually helpful, and certainly would be less so if you were a complete novice. Every eighth lesson is a "review" lesson, which also includes some grammatical info. But for the most part, grammatical explanations are few and brief.The dialogues are nice, but as another reviewer pointed out, they are sometimes very out of date. Chapter 12 is about making a long distance (from Milan to Rome) phone call from a call center (called SIP, which they don't translate). I don't mind that prices are all given in lire, since it allows for practice with high numbers (lire prices are always in the thousands).My biggest annoyance with the book are all of the misprints. In the first fifty pages, I found several Italian words misspelled, and occasionally mistranslated (another reviewer mentioned the word for 'lunch' is translated 'breakfast' at one point). But if you are not relying 100% on this book for all of your Italian, then it is not a big problem.I think the book would be a little frustrating and hard for a complete beginner, but is a great way to brush up your Italian, practice your listening comprehension, and expand your vocabulary. Unlike some other methods, like Pimsleur (which I love), Assimil is not afraid of using lots of new words. I also have been using this course for "shadowing", which is trying to speak along with the Italian dialogues as they are being said, at natural speed.Worth picking up at this price (under $40), and certainly not a gimmick like some of those CD-Rom courses.

I was not very impressed with this language learning program. You have to be somewhat already fluent to follow what the speakers are saying. My favorite language learning program in Living Language Complete. They guide you step by step from beginning to intermediate to advanced, allowing you time to repeat what the instructor said. Some people may find this boring and old fashioned as they put the student through sentence drills. But for me, it is the best method because it gives me great audio skills and speech practice.