Description

This is a really well-produced immersion-style Italian language course “per stranieri” (for foreigners) with a truly fun and unique format that makes learning enjoyable, effective and efficient.  Volume I consists of 20 lessons, and Volume II consists of 15 lessons.  The lessons are roughly 20 minutes apiece, give or take a minute or two.  The first half or so of each lesson begins as though you’re watching a short episode of a family sitcom (or perhaps just a sit, depending on if you think it qualifies as comedy).  Then scenes and phrases are broken down and highlighted.  Then the Italian maestri (teachers) go over grammar, usage/cultural notes (e.g. how to be polite), and vocabulary.  Overall, the production quality is pretty good, and there is plenty of on-screen text.  The entire script for every episode is provided among the handouts along with two exercise handouts per lesson (three per lesson for Vol II – verde, rosse, e azzuro).  The handouts are colorful, instructive, engaging, and even look fun featuring games like word searches, and fill-in-the-blanks, along with useful tables and charts.  In the first lesson they explain that the green (verde) notebook contains the easier exercises, and the red notebook contains the more difficult ones.  I’m not sure what the blue one is, though it seems to be mostly about the “sitcom.”  The are many solution sets as well, at least for Volume II.  What’s cool about this immersion format is since it’s 100% in Italian, anyone can use it regardless of one’s mother tongue! That comes with limitations too, so of course you might need to supplement this with other materials to suit your learning goals, however, that can be said of virtually any language learning product.  For the time you’ll spend with this, I’d say it’s a hell of a crash course.  I imagine if you just moved to Italy or are about to move to Italy and you only have a month to prepare, this is probably what you’d want to use to kickstart your Italian and get used to the idea of being immersed in it.  Enjoy!