Italian Made Simple 2nd (second) Edition by Cristina, Mazzoni published by Broadway Books (A Division of Bantam Doubleday Del (2004) Unknown Binding

It was a present but I think the recipient found it very useful

Sometimes confusing and a bit messy but generally good as first approach to the Italian language.The author should note that there are some minor mistakes in the spelling, grammar and excercises...

Perfetto!....It's simple to follow and even reassures someone revisiting the language..Great useful book.Love it! Glad it ahs a place in my Italian library.

just right

A very heavy focus on grammar and rote learning and far too little on actual communicative aspects. As such, I found it very difficult to engage with. After half a dozen chapters, I have swapped to a different book and find it much better. Not a terrible book but I didn't enjoy the style or the methodology.

This is a pretty well structured book that I think will give someone a good foundation and understanding of Italian. It is very dry and in black and white text so visual learners may find it very un-engaging but each chapter is laid out well and you are gradually introduced to new grammar through reading and exercises and only a few paragraphs of notes on the technical side of grammar. I think this is a good approach as reading a full page of grammatical language is much less effective than seeing it in action. I don’t think you could use this book as a total beginner however. I had watched an entire beginners video course on youtube which was a good primer and used a few apps to learn some basics. If I hadn’t done this I think I would have struggled to engage with the material in the book. But overall I think it is a very good learning resource. So, why only 3 stars? There are 3 major issues with the book, and based on how strongly you feel about the below criticisms, you can weigh them up with the above (mostly) praise to see if the book would be good for you. Basically, all the problems follow a theme - it's time for a new edition!1. The least problematic potentially, but also one that shows the book's age, is that it is frightfully out of date. Mentions of DVDs, videocassettes, compact discs, letters even, seem pretty dated already. A section about genres of film lists ‘Love Story’ as an example of a romance - a film from the ‘70s! There is no mention of new technologies except some to do with email (the most recent edition is from 2003) and some websites as well.2. Related to the first problem, but more serious is the need for a new edition, not just because it’s outdated, but because this edition is a mess. There are many chapters with mis-numbered exercises, or exercises where you have to put sentences together from a jumble of words but there is a verb missing, or a few spelling errors, or the answer at the back of the book is different from the question or it contains a different verb or noun. Some of the exercises are also non-sensical as if the instruction of the exercise and the sentences to complete below were updated at different times and no longer make much sense together. For example, a lesson about constructing a sentence in the imperative says, "Imagine you are unhappy with your Italian teacher: what do you ask her?" It starts off making sense, such as 'Explain the lesson better!' and 'Accept late homework' but then becomes, 'sing a love song to the person you love!' and 'Take a trip to the sea in Sicily!', which is hardly context-appropriate. I am not sure if it's meant to be humorous as the rest of the book doesn't seem to be aiming for this tone at all.3. Further to the problem of this book originally being published in 1943, updated in 1960 and 2003 (and possibly in between), is that the ‘story’ which takes the form of each chapter being a lesson between a teacher and her student, involves cringe-worthy and increasingly horrifying attempts by the student - a man - repeatedly asking his teacher out, while she very politely and respectfully declines. At this point I haven’t finished the book and am concerned how the story will resolve itself. The story is told in the ‘reading’ section of each chapter but even the exercises around it reveal small details, like how the student will be met on his business trip to Italy by his supplier’s young blonde assistant and one of the exercises is completing a sentence about how the teacher, Marina, is jealous of the assistant, Isabella. There are many instances where my involuntary eye-rolls interfere with my language learning and it would be great if in an edition that introduces the concept that no one ever sends letters anymore, might also tidy up this pretty awful story of a man constantly pressuring a woman to go out with him and sulking and constantly bringing up her rejection. If the book posits a happily ever after scenario for them at the end, it will be even more grotesque.So, if you’re ok with all that and just want a dry but effective formula for language learning, in a book at a pretty good price, then you’ll be OK. Other things to note - there is no audio material but honestly I usually find this the weakest part of a language learning resource such as this. I prefer to use media elsewhere. Also, it is painfully American. It would be nice if it was a bit more internationally-focussed. Maybe these days Americans are more aware of and less freaked out by concepts such as Kilometres and that other countries have different currencies (!), but in this edition a lot of space is wasted on this cultural hand-holding.

Quality book