dbag Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 5021 days ago 605 posts - 1046 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish
| Message 9 of 15 19 May 2012 at 12:14am | IP Logged |
If the Spanish courses are anything to go buy, Pimsleur and MT won't be anywhere near
as thorough as the kind of course I think the OP is looking for. Something like the FSI
basic course, with hour upon hour of hardcore audio_lingual drills?
The possible non existence of such a course for Italian distresses me no end. I KNOW I
could learn Italian almost as a matter of routine were such a course available.
Well, there may be such a course. It will cost you though. It can be found on
the cafe lango Site (sorry I can't post the link for some reason) and is called Modern
Spoken Italian by Elaine Vertucci Beran. It is available in 2 parts, and costs $125 for
each part. There is 8 hours of audio with each level, and the site says it includes
repetition and substitution drills, among others, so it sounds pretty much like an FSI
course.
If I didn't have to save every penny I have for traveling, I would buy it immediately.
Any one fancy giving it a punt and letting us all know what it's like? I think that
Site might be shutting down soon, so there could be a rapidly closing Window.
Edited by dbag on 19 May 2012 at 12:15am
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dbag Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 5021 days ago 605 posts - 1046 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish
| Message 10 of 15 19 May 2012 at 1:18am | IP Logged |
There is also Spoken Modern Italian (different course) by Robert Hall, published by
spoken language services (Prof A did a video on this series, apparently they are very
similar to fsi). I have found it used on Amazon, but interestingly, it is NOT available
on the spoken language services site.
It is only available on cassette, and of course is also very expensive. I wonder what
the copyright status is on these courses? Would be a great shame to see them disappear.
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SaYwHt2 Triglot Newbie Belgium Joined 5597 days ago 9 posts - 15 votes Speaks: English, German, French Studies: Italian, Russian, Dutch, Swedish, Croatian, Slovenian
| Message 11 of 15 22 May 2012 at 9:59am | IP Logged |
Thank you for the recommendations! I watched Prof A's review on the SLS series and found a copy of the Spoken Modern Italian course on Amazon UK for £120. Expensive to be sure, but I just hope that it was worth the money since could not find any review or sample of the Italian course specifically. Normally I wouldn't spend that much money, but the course offerings for Italian are so lacking that I've decided to take the risk. I've already wasted hundreds of Euros on intensive courses in Rome, so 120 pounds more is money well spent if it works :)
I was ready to also buy the course on the Cafe Lando site when I thought that the Mp3+text version meant that it would be a digital download, but was dissapointed once I saw that that just meant that they had remastered a physical mp3 cd. I hope that they offer this a download in the future on their ebay or Amazon pages since I don't want to ship from the US to Europe (last time I did that it took over 4 months for a course to arrive to me).
Will post my thoughts on the SLS course once it gets here.
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dbag Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 5021 days ago 605 posts - 1046 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish
| Message 12 of 15 22 May 2012 at 7:50pm | IP Logged |
Awesome. Can't wait to hear what it's like. Yeah, it's a pity about the other course. I
can't help but think they'd sell a lot more courses if they dropped the prices to
something reasonable.
Interesting to hear that you are struggling to actually speak a language without
audio-lingual drills, despite having lots of previous experience.
I doubt I'd be able to learn anything well without drills either, there just so damn
effective.
Edited by dbag on 22 May 2012 at 7:51pm
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dbag Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 5021 days ago 605 posts - 1046 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish
| Message 13 of 15 08 June 2012 at 11:52pm | IP Logged |
Has it come yet?
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SaYwHt2 Triglot Newbie Belgium Joined 5597 days ago 9 posts - 15 votes Speaks: English, German, French Studies: Italian, Russian, Dutch, Swedish, Croatian, Slovenian
| Message 14 of 15 11 June 2012 at 2:30pm | IP Logged |
It should come today at the latest according to the shipping info. I can't wait to get it and wish it would
hurry up! Will post once it comes.
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dbag Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 5021 days ago 605 posts - 1046 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish
| Message 15 of 15 25 July 2012 at 9:57am | IP Logged |
Any joy yet?
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