A Good Introduction and Good Value
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I enjoy Quickstart Italian mainly because it is an easy introduction split into bitesize sections. In each 10 minute segment you'll learn three or four phrases useful in circumstances such as in a taxi, hotel, restaurant etc. Do a lesson or two a day and in a couple of weeks you'll have a much better grasp of basic Italian than you did before. I agree with another reviewer that the frequent use of the title music is a bit annoying but I found the course effective and accessible which is something. My only criticism of the course is that it gives no explanation of verb structure leaving you stuck in the tenses that they use. However, Michel Thomas' Introductory course gives excellent coverage of verb structure but doesn't cover the everyday usage that this set does, so the two courses, I find, go very well together. At £8 this is great value. I recommend it to beginners.
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there's better stuff out there
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With a holiday to Italy coming up, preceded by several long car journeys, I bought three language CDs to listen to in the car: Earworms, Learn in Your Car Complete Language Course and BBC Quickstart and I'd rate them them in that order. They're all easy to listen to in the car, although I think they are actually better suited to short journeys than long ones.
Quickstart was my least favourite. It became increasingly irritating to listen to, and by the end I was hoping that Marco's mal de stomacho would prove fatal, or at least that he would vomit over the prissy Francesca. It is more comprehensive than the Earworms CD (5 stars) but less than the Learn in Your Car (3 stars) and to be honest, I found it simply too aggravating to give more than 2 stars.
I found there were two areas that bugged me. Firstly, the characters had unattractive voices - Francesca was particularly shrill - and the script they had to follow made them do various unnatural things such as lots of pondering aloud to enable them to give menu vocab, or going to several hotels before finding a room just so you could hear a wide range of potential responses. It's a good idea in theory, but drove me mad in practice.
The other thing I increasingly resented as I worked my way through the CDs was the method - again, a good idea in theory, but crash-inducing in practice. Each lesson is split into four sections. A presenter with an annoying voice goes over the key vocab in the role play to follow, you then listen to the role play, it's broken down into sections and you repeat key phrases, you listen again. Fine - but each section is separated by the presenter making knowing comments on the 'action' eg "Will our friends find a room? Let's listen and find out!" The presenter also gets to say again (and again) the section headings (Time to Reflect! Time to...Listen Again! etc) and there's an annoying jingle each and every time which lasts for ages. When there are nearly 50 sections, this starts to matter. Each section also gets its own track number on the CD, so rather than flicking through to track 10, for example, as you do with the other two CDs, if you want to got to lesson 10 on Quickstart, you have to flick through to track 43. Not great when driving.
I'll never ever listen to this again, whereas I happily listened to the whole of the Earworms CD three times, and would listen to that again. Oh, and everything that I heard on the Earworms tape magically stuck without any effort on my part, so if you're going on holiday, that's the one to buy.
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Quickstart Italian(audiobook) Excellent
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This is the best language CD I've heard. Don't settle for cheaper versions. Ideal for beginners and holiday communications. Clear and practical. My only previous language experience was a little french at school. I listened to this in my car learning one chapter at a time. I highly recommend this. I am so impressed I have now purchased Quickstart German.
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Good for beginners
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Just listening to this CD set helped me pick up the basics of Italian. Several short scenes are played out and these are then broken down and explained. Breaks on the CD let you practice out loud without having to use the pause button on your CD player, something I find very frustrating and impractical if listening in the car. There's a booklet included (not mentioned on the cover of the pack) showing all the conversations on the CD. I found this very helpful, especially when trying to guess the right spelling of some words - and getting them completely wrong!
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