The book consists of Elementary and Pre-intermediate courses with parallel Italian-English texts. The author maintains learners' motivation with funny stories about real life situations such as meeting people, studying, job searches, working etc. The method utilize natural human ability to remember words used in texts repeatedly and systematically. With the translation on the same page, you can effortlessly learn what any unfamiliar words mean. You can quickly pick up new vocabulary and phrases that are used over and over in the book. As you read the book, your brain begins to remember words and phrases simply because you are exposed to them several times. You don't even realize, until you have to recall what you've learned, that you have already learned the new words and phrases. The audio tracks are available inclusive online. With the help of QR codes, call up an audio file without manually entering web addresses. This book has already helped a lot people to discover their true language potential. Twenty minutes a day is the rule for success!
I actually do like this book very much. It is probably best to use this book though with another course, or at least, with a decent grammar supplement. I bought it to reinforce basic vocabulary and practice translation from L2 to L1. What I DO particularly like, and the reason that I have both books, is that the online audio available is EXCELLENT. Although MP3 files, it is a very clean, clear, feminine voice with the entire book's word lists and accompanying dialogs downloadable from their website.
I studied Italian in high school and college, but it has been a long while since I have practiced at all. When my daughter decided to take it at school, I started to look for a resource so that I could brush up and help her. I found the "First Italian Reader" and bought it to brush up on my Italian, and it really helped me remember a lot of my Italian and I learned some new words as well! What I didn't expect but is a huge bonus: it is also an excellent tool for my daughter. She was able to use this book to learn both words and phrases and it really helped prepare her for Italian I at school. She definitely had a head start on her classmates!
This is a superb method to learn Italian in parallel with any standard textbook. For each chapter, I listen to the high quality MP3 while reading the story in Italian. Then, I try to speak the Italian. Then, I read each sentence in English next to the same sentence in Italian. Finally, I read the English version and try to come up with the Italian words on my own.
At the beginning i didn't like the book, the dialogues seemed too simple and boring... but later, the stories become really funny and exciting :) plus now i understood that "boring dialogues" were really helpful in learning language patterns.
