[.ca] Mastering Italian: Book and 12 Cassettes (ISBN 0812073231)

Promising concept, but should be revised and updated...:
There are 2 major drawbacks to this course... Firstly, a large part of the course revolves around the learning and recognition of pronunciation-related technical terms (accents, inflections, tones, ect.) which can be tedious to some. Secondly, the actual language instruction (grammer, vocabulary, ect.) really doesn't go beyond a certain beginner's level despite the size of the book and large amount of recorded material on the cassetts. While the premise behind this type of instruction is unique and forseeably effective, I wish this course could have been designed in a better way. Most language courses begin with a general pronunciation guide then devote the rest to learning new phrases or grammer rules as well as hearing the target language spoken. This course instead begins with a foundation of phonetic sounds and learing their technical terms... and then being tested on them until later in the course when those same terms are used to teach Italian words and phrases and to recognize their meaning. A typical sequence in this course is to listen to an Italian phrase and then to answer which type of inflection was used, and in turn, to deduce the meaning of the phrase based on this. Like I said, this is a unique way of approaching language instruction, but in this case the langauge instruction doesn't go far enough. The drills in the book and on the tapes can be useful to beginners, but I don't see them being too useful for the intermediate or advanced student. A note about the pronunciation drills presented early on: a previous review stated that Italian is very easy to learn to pronounce and therefore the pronunciation drills shouldn't have been as long or tedious. This may be true for some people who have a good ear for picking up new sounds in a language and easlity reproducing them exactly. But in my experience, Italian is the language most people think they can pronounce perfectly but actually can't. This is because on the surface it doesn't look as difficult as many other more complex languages, but slight variations in tone and accent can really lead to miscommunication. I've found this to be true especially with travelers relying solely on phrase books and tapes (as well speakers of other romance languages who use the pronunciation and inflection from that language for Italian words), many times they still aren't understood when traveling to Italian cities despite using the correct phrases. Non-native speakers usually don't pick up the subleties, but the locals will. Attention to these little details in sounds DO make a huge difference. For the most part, being understood in a general sense isn't difficult to achieve. But if the goal is total fluency with no accent, then that takes specific practice and knowledge of the phonetic sounds like the ones presented in this course (however boring it may be). So the tedious pronunciation drills are a necessary evil for many beginners and should not be underestimated. Although the later drills can serve as a refresher course to keep sharp, the end result falls short of expectations.

Makes an expensive divider for your Gerbil cage!:
This course is complete nonsense. You spend hours repeating syllables without any context to meaning, and learning about pronunciation. It's impossible to learn anything about Italian, much less have any fun. I'm angry I was tricked by their "you'll master grammer, pronunciation, vocabulary" blurb on the back of the package. There's no way to develop mastery with this boring, repetetive, overly structured system. It pauses every 30 seconds to say "information unit 576" or some such nonsense. If their were a law against poorly conceived programs being sold for high prices, Barron's would be in jail. Try Pimsleur's complete Italian I -- You'll actually learn Italian if you work through their three courses.

Baby steps:
After reading a very favorable review of Barron's Mastering Spanish I decided to give this one a try. Unfortunately the bookstore I went to didn't have it so I bought one that seemed similar, I got through about two lessons before I gave up. It was too hard! Finally I broke down and bought this course and it was worth it. The course takes you through the tiniest steps so it doesn't seem like much work at all, but by the time you're done you've got a lot of knowledge of the language.

Arg! Pronunciation will drive you crazy.:
I will sell you mine for 1/2 price. Even if you are just at a beginner in italian, this course will drive you insane. If you make it though the first 2 tapes you are a saint. Save your money (or buy my copy), get Michel Thomas's CDs or Pimsleur (if you are serious about learning italian). This goes way beyond what is needed in pronunciation...unless you want to specialize in only pronunciation :-)

A rotten learning resource - a regrettable purchase:
This must have been developed for bureaucrats who mastered and prefer rote learning without a shred of imagination. Whenever I listen to it, the advancement from question to question is so miniscule that I am bored stiff after three pages. I have no idea how anyone could make it through all the cds (or tapes). Do you really need to know the syntactical name of the sounds you're learning to learn them (semi-vowels, etc.). You'd better be a nit-picking linguist to care even one bit about these lessons. The tapes and book are interdependent. You can't take a break from the book and just listen to the tapes, and you can't take a break from the tapes and just read the book. Worst of all, the book's use is utterly non-sensical. Fact after fact is recited for hundreds of pages. You just have to sit there and listen while lifeless schoolmarms recite the identical sentences you're already reading. This would have been a good idea for word recognition but the Italian words are spelled out phonetically (dur...!). With little warning as you're following along, a question is asked and the answer is alway right in front of you. It's like one team wrote the book and another made the tapes with no consideration for how they'd be used together. The aesthetics of the book are a hoot! It's been probably fifty years since a book this hideous has been published in the U.S., maybe more recently in Russia. It has a font that could only be called "Utilitarian." Accents and punctuation marks are hand-drawn on the orignal manuscript. Stimulation of any sort seems like it was resented. You could maybe get through it if it was the only book you brought with you into a bomb-shelter before a very long war. It takes a lifeless state-employed drone to produce a tool this bewilderingly idiotic. I regretted this purchase almost immediately and each succesive attempt to use the book is equally frustrating. Spend a hundred bucks on anything but this. This is teaching from a hundred unimaginative years ago. It's out of print for a very good reason.