Italianissimo: Beginners: Student Book

by Denise de Rome

This beginners' book is intended to accompany the first stage of the BBC Italian multi-media course. It provides a wide range of activities to stimulate and help learners to consolidate and develop their language skills. Grammar exercises, reading texts and revision tests are all featured.

Genres: Reference, Italian Literature, Nonfiction

288 pages, Paperback

First published October 29, 1992

Reviews

[Andrew Ives · Rating 4 out of 5]

(Set with book + 4 tapes) I bought this back in 1993 when it was released while the programmes were being broadcast on BBC. Back then, I think I gave up around unit 4 or 5 as things became a little too difficult, because Italian football was on Channel 4, and soon after, we could receive Rai Uno as well. In the interim time, I've learned far more Italian from various sources, worked in Milan and, in recent years, become a little rusty again. During lockdown, I rediscovered this and worked all the way through it to an equivalent of GCSE level in the space of about 3 weeks.

Firstly, this is quite a comprehensive tome, which is glossy, colourful and attractively presented throughout. The ten units cover a range of useful and moderately interesting topics in comparison to similar language books I've read for French and German. The 'Cultura' pages, the dialogues and the longer passages of unbroken text are very welcome and enjoyable. I wish there more of these as I think they were among the more productive sections of the book. The grammar exercises and 'reinforcement' sections are often very hard-going in places, especially for a learner without my experience, often introducing several grammatical aspects of the language simultaneously, and in the less-often used Lei, vi and noi forms, some irregular plurals and irregular past participles just for added difficulty. It was probably this that broke my willpower back in 1993. I would actually prefer a longer book with a gentler approach to learning. All said and done though, I made plenty of progress very quickly through the first 100 pages, so if you find yourself needing to learn Italian with some urgency, this is a pretty good book to choose. Even if you don't grasp all the finer points, you will certainly be able to understand plenty of written Italian and make yourself understood. 4.25/5

[Kathy · Rating 2 out of 5]

It is initially difficult to get to grips with this book because they seem to have chosen to scatter the grammar explanations in different parts of the book instead of presenting them systematically where it is easiest to find them. This means that you have to jump around and piece together the grammar from several different locations in order to get a full picture of what you should be learning. Eventually, it is possible to get a handle on the information, but I, personally, did not learn any Italian from this book until after I had sought grammatical help from elsewhere.