Softcover

ISBN 10: 0470425857 ISBN 13: 9780470425855

Publisher: Wiley, 2006

CRESCENDO! is a comprehensive intermediate Italian program that promotes the development of all four skills, encourages the acquisition of vocabulary, and provides a full review and expansion of Italian grammar-all within a rich cultural framework. Sophisticated, respected and functionally organized, CRESCENDO! emphasizes learning language in context through extensive use of authentic materials, including short stories by well-known modern Italian authors. In each thematically organized chapter, the vocabulary, situations, culturally relevant authentic readings, grammar structures and exercises are all correlated to reinforce the topics and structures featured and to give students the tools they need to express their thoughts and ideas on the themes treated.

About the Author:

Francesca Italiano is currently the Italian Language Director at the University of Southern California as well as a Professor of 18th century literature and literary theory. She is the author of Incontri Attuali, a literary reader for intermediate and advanced Italian language courses, and CRESCENDO!, Italian language program. She also directs the summer program in Verona. She has a Master of Science degree in Education from USC and earned her Ph.D. from the University of California, Los Angeles.

Irene Marchegiani, is currently Coordinator of Student Teaching for European Languages at the State University of New York, Stony Brook. She has written several essays on Giacomo Leopardi, and contemporary Italian literature, with a particular emphasis on women writers. Recently, she co-edited the volume The Poetics of Place. Florence Imagined and she is currently working on a volume on Giacomo Leopardi's Canti titled L'altro Leopardi. In collaboration with Professor Charles Jernigan she has translated Torquato Tasso's Aminta, published by Italica Press, in 2000. The book was awarded the prestigious Italian "Diego Valeri" Monselice Prize for translation in 2002, and it has received numerous significant reviews. Some of Professor Marchegiani's poems appeared in several Italian journals and recently she has published her first collection of poetry, La vita in cerchio.