Italian: A Self-Teaching Guide, 2nd Edition

This is the single best Italian book that’s on the market. I’ve dabbled in learning Italian for the last several years, and I’ve acquired many study books. This is BY FAR the best book. I’ve purchased it three extra times, to give to friends who are also learning the language. They love it as well. It’s the perfect amount of information, interaction, and review.

Very well organized and specific, appropriately detailed. Even though there is no audio with it, it will be easy to find some Italian podcast to practice your listening and pronunciation. The only thing that is not enough is the conversations doesn't cover all new grammar knowledge in each lesson, in which case you have to figure out what nuance it is yourself. If you are willing to teach yourself Italian, buy this instead of those "*** guide for ***" which emphasize themselves as a guide book for everybody.

I used the first edition of this book a number of years ago and liked it very much. Haven't gotten too far yet in this edition but have noticed a couple of annoying things: a) the original text is so old, they give currency values in lira instead of euro; b) have already found at least 3 errors in the exercise answers at the back, and I've only worked through the first 2 and a quarter chapters. The book is copyrighted 2000; surely, they could have done a corrected reprint by now! Hope if I finally get to the chapters on the more complicated verb tenses this time, that I won't be learning the wrong stuff! The book does do a good job of sequencing the lessons from simpler to more complex.

This book is packed with value for the money. There are many books out there that are much more expensive, but are not as coherently put together. I am an older student who last studied Italian in the 1950's. I decided to sign up for an adult education course in Italian this fall as an Advanced Beginner. I bought this book to get me up to speed. I have not been disappointed. I find the explanations of irregular verbs and nouns to be easy to follow, and the exercises are actually fun to do, with all the answers in the back. You have to work, but it is worth it. I find I love Italian as much as I did when I was young.

This book/guide is well organized so you learn the basics of Italian in a sequential way that makes sense. I am using it with a tutor and she explains the section, then I study and the next time we get together we go over my answers to the exercises This works very well. The vocabulary lists and dialogs help a lot, too. They are especially arranged to help travelers, with basic greetings, a restaurant dialog with vocabulary and one section on how to navigate a train station.

I started using this as a way to coach my fifth grader while he was also taking online beginning Italian, and it didn’t really meet my needs for that purpose. I need a lot of repetition for starting a language, and this books kind of breezes through each topic with a short exercise that was printed in such tiny print that it was very hard to write in, and then moves along to the next topic. I had to go back and find more workbook style books with repetitive exercises and bigger font to use daily for learning. I would say this book covers the material but doesn’t offer the exercises and tools needed for mastery. If you are willing to use this as a guide and then go online and find more exercises to practice, it would work, but I wanted a book that built the practice right into the material, and thus, it’s spent most of the year on the shelf under the workbooks I bought after giving up on this one.

Explains things in depth with lots of written exercises. Might be overwhelming for those new to language learning as it presents a lot of information up front.

Our class uses this book as a good supplement with our in person classes!

it appears very organised which i like and there is lots of contents also with a pronunciation guide which is useful

The book has all explanations in English, so, if you find this review difficult, don't buy it.It treats the subject grammatically rather than introducing simple phrases. Early chapters include:- in a downtown restaurant- at the railway station- a family birthday- grocery shoppingBut, remember, you will (for example) learn the present tense of verbs quite early, or how adjectives work.Criticisms:It is rather cavalier about the introduction of articles and doesn't make their use clear;It has an American English bias

I always liked to study by myself, which offers obvious difficulties in the case of languages. Lately I started using apps and some YouTube videos and I got clear results from all these aids. We all want the same, an easy way to learn, avoid effort, and so on. The truth, however, is that there is no easier way than a self-teaching textbook. I learnt English mostly using the old Essential English by Eckersley and German with the books from the Herder Institut, published ages ago by the East Germany Karl Marx University. First these books present the contents and then several drilling exercises and all we have to do is let them lead us. We always know what to do and don't lose ourselves. So far the best I could get for Italian was this book, which would be perfect if it had more drilling exercises. Complemented with flashcard apps, videos and so on, it is perfectly possible to learn Italian by ourselves, without having to find our way between a bunch of different overlapping materials that we abandon after a while. I suppose I would have given it only four stars if I knew of a better book, but in fact this and the Berlitz, much more limited, are the only ones I could find.

Bought this as a requirement for my italian 101 class and wow am I amazed by the quality of the book. I recommend this to everyone! No need to take a class in person because this book is self-teaching. It goes through everything, and at your own pace.Highly recommend!

I'm using this textbook as a teacher (I teach online to Italian learners around the world) and it works pretty well. The content is good and easy to proceed with. It's a very good guide.