Simon & Schuster's Pimsleur Conversational Italian Audio CD – Unabridged, October 3, 2005

Ive been doing a lot of research about the Pimsleur method and decided to start with this purchase. Trying to decide which methods I wanted to use to help me learn. I finished all the cds and was amazed! I pretty much got everything that was said on every cd, so it was easy for me to progress onto the new cd. I think I have a natural language learning ability and can speak some Spanish, so it wasn't that bad. One has to recognize the program for what it is: an audio course. If your intent is to SPEAK the language, this is the way to go (as well as hearing). I will probably go with rocket Italian in the future to supplement this (either after I finish the whole Pimselur or right before). I dont mind there is is no transcripts. Usually, every time they introduce a word or phrase, you will hear it MULTIPLE times again. There were a few exceptions. For instance, in the first few cds, there was something long the female said near the end of the lesson. I kept trying to figure out what she said before going on to the next lesson.I eventually did before I started the next one. Surprisingly, they never went back over it:/. But most everything they do. I also wish they didnt spend so much time on saying street and avenue. There is so much to talk about, even vocab, i felt they kept going over that too much. I posted on my Facebook I cant imagine where I will be after 100 lessons. I disagree with people online (ive found various Pimsleur forums etc)in that you cant get on the track to fluency with this. After all lessons, you will probably have a good speaking knowledge of Italian. Remember, there is a difference between fluency and being like a native. If you start to think in the language, its one sign you are becoming more and more fluent. I am just now starting on lesson 17 and continuing with the rest. I have a couple Italian friends online. Writing to them even now and then (maybe even skyping to them in the future) along with finishing this product, and I will be really good to go. Visiting an actual location is only really good because you have no other choice but to be submersed in the language. You can, however, get it other ways like how I am doing it. I speak a good amount of Spanish and in many ways feel I know a lot more about Italian grammar (w/ out awareness) than with Spanish.

We recently went to Italy on a family vacation and wanted to make some attempt to be familiar with the language. I decided to purchase this product as it looked like a good introduction at a good price while realizing that I was not going to be fluent in the language.It comes with 16 half-hour lessons on 8 CDs. There is also a little bit of reading practice, but its almost all verbal. The lessons work well in a car although it can be a bit hard to get pronunciation right in a noisy environment. For me it was perfect because my commute is also about a half hour long. I needed to do each lesson at least twice, but your mileage will, I'm sure, vary.The lesson content could use a little bit of work, some of the introductory lessons seem to be aimed mostly at single guys that might hope to pick up an Italian lady. That's certainly a valid use case, but both my wife and I felt it wasn't subtle at all. Fortunately, in my opinion, and taken as a whole, the lessons do provide a foundation of Italian including many useful phrases, numbers, time, directions, etc. on top of how to ask a lady if she's like to have a drink at your place.I certainly did not speak Italian even remotely well when we arrived at our vacation destination, but these lessons made all the difference, and I was able to handle a surprisingly large number of interactions.Pimsleur deserves 5 stars for a great introduction to Italian.

We're heading to Rome and Florence in late October and wanted to have some basic language skills to make the trip more enjoyable. This Pimsleur starter set is quite good and we love the way the lessons keep coming back to things you learned previously. It really helps the words and phrases stick and helps tune the ear to particular phrases, each of which are likely to be of at least some importance while we're there. The one thing that kept me from giving this a 5 star is the lack of ANY written materials. I knew this when I bought it and it's still a great CD set. However, there are many times when the speakers say something that is simply hard to understand and say properly, so I find myself going to an online translator to identify the word or phrase. If Pimsleur simply included a PDF with the transcripts, this series would be a 5 easily. As it stands, I'm creating my own transcript as I go, and it's helping me learn more effectively that doing audio alone. All said though, I've been learning Spanish off and on for years and wish I'd known about the Pimsleur-type learnings methods for that. I'm picking up basic Italian far faster with this learning method. This is worth the money and a low risk way to get started on a language.