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Italian Resources for English Speakers | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Advice Center |  | |
| diplomaticus Newbie United States Joined 3818 days ago 23 posts - 31 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German | Message 1 of 4 18 January 2014 at 2:07am | IP Logged |
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I am a long-time forum reader interested in learning Italian. After reading as many old
threads as possible, I ordered the following courses from Amazon: A. Assimil Italian With Ease B. La Lingua Italiana Per Stranieri textbook and answer key A few questions I would appreciate advice on: 1. Do I need a dictionary to be able to use the all-Italian Source B? If so,any recommendations? I am an American if that would make a difference in your suggestion (I read in a review that the Webster New World Italian dictionary is for British people, for example). I do prefer hard-copy things over paying for an electronic dictionary, for example. 2. How far will using these two courses get me after completing both? The poster numerodix seemed to have great success with course B, and Assimil gets rave reviews all over this website. My background is that I took some Spanish in high school a long, long time ago and never used it or enjoyed it much. Any thoughts on the skills I could expect to achieve would be great. 3. Would completing the FSI "Italian Programmed" Course through Lesson 15 or so to learn pronunciation be a good idea before starting the courses I ordered? I was under the impression Italian was very phonetic, so if I would be fine just working with Assimil, great! 4. I've read many good things about the Dover Essential Grammar series. Would picking up the Olga Ragusa Essential Italian Grammar book be a good idea? Or would it just be a waste of a few bucks since I ordered La Lingua Italiana Per Stranieri already? My local library has slim pickings. Pimsleur, many outdated phrasebooks with silly cartoons, and one copy each of "Italian Step-by-Step" from Berlitz and "English Grammar for Students of Italian" by Adorni and Primorac. If anyone thinks either of those would be great supplements to the two things I already ordered, I will go check them out. Alternatively, I will just plan to get started on those two courses once they arrive. I've never self-studied a language before, so any input on the courses I am using and how to get the most out of each, or for other resources I may want to consider (I don't mind spending the money to support good quality and lesser-known materials), I would greatly appreciate it! If I were to get no input, I would plan to just work through one Assimil lesson a day when it arrives and spend as much time as possible going through La Lingua Italiana Per Stranieri as my free-time waxes and wanes. Thank you for your time and consideration. Edited by diplomaticus on 18 January 2014 at 2:52am 3 persons have voted this message useful | |
| Cavesa Triglot Senior Member Czech Republic Joined 4862 days ago 3277 posts - 6779 votes  Speaks: Czech*, FrenchC2, EnglishC1 Studies: Spanish, German, Italian | Message 2 of 4 19 January 2014 at 1:54am | IP Logged |
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I have yet to start Italian (in rather distant future) so I am going to put in some points I learnt from similar languages before you get the real Italian learners here.
1.It is a a good thing to get a dictionary and work with a good quality monolingual course. Much better than learning with a bad quality bilingual one. If you don't mind working with a dictionary, the better for you. However, I wouldn't shy away from good quality online dictionaries, there are some. They make searching much faster and it is usually better, in my opinion, to wait a bit before investing in a dictionary. When you are a bit further in the language, you know much better what kind of dictionary you are looking for. 2.The FSI pronunciation drills are awesome. I don't think you need to get through 15 lessons in any FSI course to learn the pronunciation, any course with tons of audio will work as long as you get the basics. The introductory chapters in FSI courses (I've used three so far) are awesome. 3.Grammar books can be very useful but choose one that won't make you scared, the best will be one you'll like to work with. So, don't choose blindly without having a look inside. Try to read a few paragraphs to see whether the explanations are clear (try to learn something basic from it, such us how the present tense is formed), look whether there are exemples. And a grammar with exercises is a useful thing as well, I've seen one or two Italian ones in a bookshop. 4.Pimsleur is a useful thing, you might want to give it a try. The rest, I don't think it will be of much use but an experienced Italian learner may tell you otherwise. 3 persons have voted this message useful | |
| garyb Triglot Senior Member ScotlandRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5060 days ago 1468 posts - 2413 votes Speaks: English*, Italian, French Studies: Spanish | Message 3 of 4 20 January 2014 at 11:26am | IP Logged |
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Assimil is great. I've not used Per Stranieri but I hear good things. I also started by using the FSI lessons for pronunciation and I found them very helpful, as they point out a lot of important things that often aren't obvious from just listening. I still ended up developing some bad pronunciation habits later on though, but that was probably just me not paying enough attention to apply what I had learnt.
3 persons have voted this message useful | |
| diplomaticus Newbie United States Joined 3818 days ago 23 posts - 31 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German | Message 4 of 4 22 January 2014 at 3:54am | IP Logged |
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La Lingua Italiana textbook arrived today. No answer key yet. Annoyingly, answers are
written into a good proportion of the text even though the Amazon seller said it was a clean copy. I suppose I will have to go through and erase before I can make use of it. Also, this thing really is entirely in Italian, haha. I knew that when ordering it, but it is the first entirely Italian text I've ever held in my hands. I can make out a bit here and there in the intro. I was able to guess that "paroles" is the Italian word for "words" and it appears that 1,000 Italian words make up 85% of daily usage words and 3,000 make up 95%? From what another poster said, words in pink at the end of a section note the # of words one knows in Italian so far. Apparently finishing this entire text will teach someone 1450 words if they remember them all! What a cool concept for a text. Anyway, I didn't really get much else out of the preface, but I will read it again tomorrow since I am tired. Maybe more will naturally reveal itself to me? If not, I will just skip to starting Chapter 1. It looks like just pictures of things to teach basic conjugations and show some vocab. I will be interested to see if I feel like I can work this all out just from context! 2 persons have voted this message useful |
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