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Progetto Italiano--anyone? | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Programs, Books & Tapes |  | |
| tesse Newbie Canada Joined 3427 days ago 6 posts - 6 votes Studies: French, Italian, Mandarin | Message 1 of 4 19 January 2016 at 3:58pm | IP Logged | ||
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Learning Italian.
The local Italian cultural institute runs classes and they use these books. I have asked around and no one has even heard of the series. Just wondering if I should stick with independent learning or if I should give this method a go? Presently I have the Michel Thomas and I just received the Assimil Italian. (Berlitz really is a non-starter for me--just couldn't get into it as regularly as required. Seems dated in many respects... 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Speakeasy Senior Member Canada Joined 4051 days ago 507 posts - 1098 votes  Studies: German | Message 2 of 4 19 January 2016 at 5:54pm | IP Logged | ||
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Hi Tesse,
When I began learning Italian a couple of years ago, and being something of an obsessive collector of language-learning materials, I purchased the first couple of volumes of the Progretto Italiano series, course book and workbook, even though I had no intention of attending classes. What do I think of these materials? Well,... I have a fairly large collection of language-learning materials that were designed for teaching German in a classroom setting and I found that the Progretto Italiano series adopted the same general approach. While this publisher of this series offers two versions of the introductory their introductory course, one in English, and one in Italian, almost invariably, the course materials for classroom courses are prepared in the TARGET LANGUAGE ONLY and they REQUIRE the SUPPORT of a qualified instructor. While some independent learners might enjoy the challenge of working with such materials, in my opinion, they are NOT WELL-SUITED for SELF-STUDY, particularly at the introductory level ... and I refuse to debate the point. Invariably, the publishers divide these types of materials according to CEFR levels: A1, A2, B1, etcetera or even A1.1, A1.2, A2.1, A2.2 and so forth. The materials include a course book, a work book, a student activities manual, separate test modules, separate recorded CDs, separate DVDs, and some online student activities that are often restricted to registered users who must purchase, or have issued to them by a registered instructor, the appropriate access codes. The combined packages cost several hundreds of dollars, per level! To my astonishment, the actual CONTENT of the packages is EXTREMELY LIMITED, unless of course, one considers multiple photographs of smiling, cheery, physically attractive young adults enjoying their visit to Italy as "content". Sorry, I forgot to mention the cute little drawings of serpents that slither across the pages forming complete sentences that one must "decode". While I found the books depressingly devoid of content, what I found even more surprising was that the audio recordings seemed to be mere "illustrations" of the target language that were NOT designed for actual practice. I had been expecting dialogues or sentence-pattern drills or "something" that I should recite in my attempts to grasp the language and develop some level of fluency. Nope, not in the classroom-directed course materials! All that I written above applies to the Progretto Italiano materials that I purchased ... I should have known better ... and I eventually donated them to the local Salvation Army depot. So, if your intentions do not include attending classes where these materials are required, I suggest that you save yourself the price of purchasing them as well as the cost of transporting them to the local recycling centre. If your intentions are to follow the independent-learner path, then you already have two fairly good sets of materials. The only specific addition that I would recommend would be that you purchase the handy little book "Italian Verbs & Essentials of Grammar", published by McGraw-Hill and that you consult it for clarification of the issues raised in your current materials. In addition to the materials that you already have, I would suggest that you take a look at the FSI Italian FAST course that is freely available on the FSI Language Courses website. Although this course was designed to be taught in a classroom setting, the materials are sufficiently clear for use in an independent learning context. As the "pace" of these materials is quite "brisk", I suggest that you complete the Michael Thomas Italian course before attempting these materials. In fact, it wouldn't be a bad idea if you were to complete the first third of the Assimil Italian course, as well. However, by all means, AVOID the FSI Italian PROGRAMMATIC course. The FSI very successfully applied the programmatic method to their Portuguese course, to a somewhat lesser extent to their Spanish course, but completely missed the boat with their Italian course! Finally, I would point out that many of the "more active" members of this forum have moved over to the new/replacement forum A Language Learners' Forum. Without wish to display disloyalty to the HTLAL, I suggest that you consider doing so, as well. Good luck with your studies! Speakeasy, PS: As to the BERLITZ courses, while I cannot put my finger on the "why" or rather "why not", I simply did not enjoy their approach to independent-learning materials and I was quite pleased when I discovered the alternatives. Edited by Speakeasy on 19 January 2016 at 6:09pm 5 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6596 days ago 9753 posts - 15779 votes 4 sounds Speaks: Russian*, English, FinnishC1, Latin, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Danish, Romanian, Polish, Belarusian, Ukrainian, Croatian, Slovenian, Catalan, Czech, Galician, Dutch, Swedish | Message 3 of 4 19 January 2016 at 7:02pm | IP Logged | ||
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I think it's popular here at least. This sort of textbooks is generally good. Whom did you ask about it?
In general methods are more about techniques than specific textbooks. And whether to take a specific class is an entirely different decision. How much do you already know and what do you expect to learn? 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| tesse Newbie Canada Joined 3427 days ago 6 posts - 6 votes Studies: French, Italian, Mandarin | Message 4 of 4 24 February 2016 at 11:33pm | IP Logged | ||
Thank you for your comments! I thought I was was the only one who simply did not 'gel' with the Berlitz pedagogy. Will take a second look at FSI and perhaps the Assimil... 1 person has voted this message useful |
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