Reviews

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Basic Italian, by Alessandra Visconti

3-5 Italian, Books, Kids

I did not love Practice Makes Perfect: Basic Italian by Alessandra Visconti, but I found it pleasant. I am in general pretty fond of the ubiquitous Practice Makes Perfect series from McGraw-Hill and have used…

Learn Italian with Paul Noble, from Collins

4 Italian, Audio Lessons

Paul Noble is an actual person, an English person, and quite young. He has a language school in England, and this Italian offering of his—via the UK publishing company Collins—seeks to replicate the experience of studying at his…

Italian-Flashcards.com: More Than Flashcards!

5 Italian, Audio Lessons, Flashcards, Multimedia, Vocabulary, Websites, Kids

This website from the British-based company Antosch & Lin Languages offers Italian flashcards on steroids. And cheap, too! There is much to do here, so drive your browser on over and check it out. Unlike some other language-learning products with…

Italian: A Good Old-Fashioned Grammar Portrait

5 Italian, Books

I have generally adored the Essential Grammar series from Dover Publications, and this Italian one by Olga Ragusa is no exception. In just 111 pages and for only $5.95, this old-fashioned book (originally published in 1963) provides a petite yet oddly…

A Box from Berlitz, Full of Italian Vocabulary

4-5 Italian, Flashcards, Vocabulary

These Italian vocabulary study cards from Berlitz were a pleasant surprise. I liked the choice of words included; they are of general interest, varied, not too specialized.  Buy them and you will learn things like “lip” (il …

Multilingual Motivation

4 French, General, German, Italian, Portuguese, Spanish, Vocabulary

Can’t commit to a single language? Go for five at a time, then, with this daily tweet translating an English word into five languages: Portuguese, Spanish, French, Italian, and German. Today’s word was “train.”  Portuguese:

Schoenhof's Website Is a Window to the World

5 Arabic, Dutch, English, French, General, German, Greek, Hebrew, Hindi, Irish, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Mandarin, Persian, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, Swedish, Yiddish, Websites, Bookstores/Libraries, Kids

Founded in 1856, Schoenhof’s claims to have the “largest collection of foreign books in North America.” As a student at Harvard, I used to shop at their main store in Harvard Square for my language and literature course materials. I…

Italian Now! Do Not Delay!

4 Italian, Books

This book by Marcel Danesi was the most basic Italian text I used. It is a book you can truly use from a starting point of zero Italian knowledge; other beginners’ books that claim you can start from nothing often…

Italian Grammar Drills: Language Boot Camp!

4 Italian, Books

I am a big fan of grammar drills. I find them unbelievably helpful. In Italian Grammar Drills by Paola Nanni-Tate, I sometimes just jumped around randomly from section to section, working on whatever I felt my weakness…