Practice Makes Perfect: Italian Verb Tenses

You need to bring a little pre-existing knowledge of Italian grammar and vocabulary to Practice Makes Perfect: Italian Verb Tenses by Paola Nanni-Tate, but if you do, you should be fine. I thoroughly enjoyed this book.

Ms. Nanni-Tate includes many helpful drills and translation exercises from English to Italian. Excellent exercise design here—and that’s an area where grammar books often fail.

The only reason I am not giving Practice Makes Perfect: Italian Verb Tenses a five-star rating is the sheer quantity of copyediting mistakes. These include numerous errors and problems in the exercises and answer keys. If you are good at language, you will generally notice them as obvious mistakes and not be confused. Nonetheless, this book, which is published by McGraw-Hill, needs a good scrubbing.

Despite the editing weaknesses, this is one of the most enjoyable Italian books I have used, and I recommend it to anyone interested in improving their Italian verb skills. I know that I am much more comfortable speaking in a language once I master conjugations, so verbs are an area I tend to focus on a lot.

A new edition of Practice Makes Perfect: Italian Verb Tenses is scheduled to come out in June 2013.