Learn in Your Car Italian Level One (Learn in Your Car) (ISBN 1591257263)

Amazon.com Audiobook Review:
Look ma, no textbooks! The Learn in Your Car series treats you like a child--in the best possible way--starting with one-word phrases ("please," "good-by"), counting exercises, and simple nouns ("bus," "train") designed to imitate a child's learning process. First you hear the words in English, then they are repeated slowly in clear, unaccented pronunciations. The method is extremely effective for those who don't know a thing, or for those who want to brush up by testing themselves when the English words are spoken. The tapes emphasize the building blocks of communicating in a foreign country rather than rote phrases that only apply on the tape and not in real-life exchanges. Level 1 painlessly covers basic verb forms, essential prepositions, near future and past tenses, as well as shopping, hotel reservations, and other travel-related situations. The series includes French, German, Italian, Russian, Japanese, and Spanish in three levels that can be purchased individually or in boxed sets. Each level contains two 90-minute cassettes (or CDs) and an accompanying booklet (not for use behind the wheel) with helpful explanations and scripts for the lessons.

Book Description:
Coming this fall! The all new, updated, enhanced edition of the best-selling Learn In Your Car Foreign Language Series is ready to be released this fall. This exciting new edition also includes a Travelogue DVD of the relevant destination countries for each language. This added feature will enrich the learning experience and add that extra stimulus to motivate users with their studies. Added material in this second edition includes a variety of internet and digital media/technology terms. All New ISBNs for this popular series!

Where did they get this anouncer from ??:
The package says "Prepared by dialect-free professionals"... What they should also have insisted on is they be NATIVE Italian speakers too! Listening to the female do the Italian part gave me an uneasy feeling... I kept asking myself "is her pronunciation right?" For example, every beginner knows "Io voglio" is pronounced "ee-yo volyo"... but the speaker here kept saying "ee-yo VOY-yo" (wish no "l" sound). Drove me crazy to listen to her mispronounce it over and over! At other times, it sounded as if she was just learning the proper pronunciation (in other words, as if they took someone who knows nothing about Italian and has them practice a word a few times, then reads that word aloud). How did they expect people to learn the correct pronunciation like this?? The other less severe complaint I have is that they should have steered away from "travelers vocabulary" and instead focussed on what most other programs don't, that is normal BASIC speaking which is what grammer is built upon. I know most people who take couses do it because of travel, but there are tons of specific travelers leanguage pograms already available. How about a program with vocabulary NOT used for travel? I'm tired of refrences like "customs office". The package implys the method used here is how a child learns.. well that may be true, but I doubt children focus on travel terms. Overall, good idea but he speaker's pronunciation wasn't good enough.

What is going on??:
I am going to Italy for my honeymoon in two months and am so excited I decided I should learn some of the language, so I can really get into the vacation. I also commute far to work so this sounded ideal, however, I have no idea what is going on during these cds. A man randomly says words and a woman says them in Italian... I don't learn like that at all (does anyone?). Are we really supposed to just memorize every single word on these cds from hearing someone say them in Italian, without any instruction on the logic of conjugations, pluralization, etc.? It is such rote memorization, totally not for me. I remember like three words, don't ask me to put them into a sentence! I have only listened to the first cd, so the other two may be different, but its pretty telling in and of iteself that someone as eager as I am to learn the language can't bear to listen to all the cds! They are so useless. If you learn by hearing, and have a fantastic memory that requires no understanding of logic, this is for you.

Not a good learning resource:
I am a true beginner, and when I started listening to this course I liked it. It is structured for simple vocabulary building (words/phrases in English followed by Italian translation). But even to me it was clear that Italian speaker in not native. As I listened to other audio classes, I questioned pronunciation, and confirmed with my Italian teacher, that a lot of words on this CD are mispronounced(the rest of reivews seem to agree), and some are presented in wrong content. Unless you are ready to double-check every word you learn, stay away from this course.

Italian: Level 1:
The course itself is great. However,the spoken word is sometimes not understandable without following the lesson in the book and seeing the word at the same time. This is impossible to do safely while driving.

OK if used with other programs:
Use this if you are using another program also. The speaker isn't native. She actually makes mistakes on the CDs--wrong gender for nouns, mistaking the formal form of the verb for the familiar form, putting the wrong article for the noun. Also, she is not fluid in her speech. I bought the Pimsleurs programs 1 & 2 and will probably buy the 3. Pimsleurs gives you great pronunciation, conversation, and correct sentence structure. I just use the "Learn in Your Car" program because I recently moved to Italy and I'm not in a position to wait until I get to the end of the 2nd or 3rd Pimsleurs course to get the vocabulary I need. The benefits of the "Learn in you Car" Italian are that you do get a lot of vocabulary words quickly and that it's cheap--especially when compared to Pimsleur. But remember that with this program, you won't talk like a native. With Pimsleurs, you actually can talk like a native and you're being taught the materials correctly. My suggestion is that you find this at the library like I did. P.S. I am also using "Ultimate Italian" to learn to read Italian better and to get more grammar and vocabulary. I'm just starting on the Ultimate Italian this week, so I don't have a recommendation for that program yet.