|
Pimsleur Comprehensive Italian Level 1 - Discount - Audio 16 CD
Pimsleur Comprehensive Italian Level 1
Comprehensive Italian I includes 30 lessons of essential grammar and vocabulary -- 16 hours of real-life spoken practice sessions -- plus an introduction to reading.
Upon completion of this Level I program, you will have functional spoken proficiency with the most-frequently-used vocabulary and grammatical structures. You will be able to:
* initiate and maintain face-to-face conversations,
* deal with every day situations -- ask for information, directions, and give basic information about yourself and family,
* communicate basic information on informal topics and participate in casual conversations,
* avoid basic cultural errors and handle minimum courtesy and travel requirements,
* satisfy personal needs and limited social demands,
* establish rapport with strangers in foreign countries,
* begin reading and sounding out items with native-like pronunciation.
The pimsleur foreign language education technique is a language remembering means designed by Paul Pimsleur. The system is centered on some chief ideas : anticipation, graduated intermission recall, main vocabulary, in addition to organic and natural learning. The Pimsleur approach is an audiobook procedure, in which the student builds sentences or repeats from memory along with a CD. Language courses frequently want a learner to reiterate following an instructor, which Pimsleur argued was a slow way of learning. Dr pimsleur developed a "challenge and comeback" technique, where a learner was prompted to change a expression into the objective language, which was then established. This method results in a more active way of learning, making the learner to cogitate before responding. Dr pimsleur believed the tenet of anticipation reflected real conversations in that a speaker ought to call to mind a phrase quickly.
The Dr pimsleur system in no way teaches grammar explicitly, instead leaving the student to infer the grammar through ordinary patterns and sentences repeated over and over. Dr pimsleur said this inductive technique is specifically how native speakers ascertain grammar when they are children; only in schools is it "taught" on the blackboard.
About the Italian Language
Italian is a Romance language spoken by about 63 million people, primarily in Italy. It is also the official language of San Marino and Vatican City. In Switzerland, Italian is one of four official languages. Standard Italian, adopted by the state after the unification of Italy, is based on Tuscan dialect and is somewhat intermediate between Italo-Dalmatian languages of the South and Northern Italian dialects of the North.
In Italy, all Romance languages spoken as the vernacular in Italy, other than standard Italian and other unrelated, non-Italian languages, are termed "Italian dialects". Many Italian dialects are, in fact, historical languages in their own right. These include recognized language groups such as Friulian, Neapolitan, Sardinian, Sicilian, Venetian, and others, and regional variants of these languages such as Calabrian. Though the division between dialect and language has been used by scholars (such as by Francesco Bruni) to distinguish between the languages that made up the Italian koine, and those which had very little or no part in it, such as Albanian, Greek, German, Ladin, and Occitan, which are still spoken by minorities.
Unlike most other Romance languages, Italian has retained the contrast between short and long consonants which existed in Latin. As in most Romance languages, stress is distinctive. Of the Romance languages, Italian is considered to be one of the closest resembling Latin in terms of vocabulary, though Romanian most closely preserves the noun declension system of Classical Latin, and Spanish the verb conjugation system , while Sardinian is the most conservative in terms of phonology.
Dialects are generally not used for general mass communication and are usually limited to native speakers in informal contexts.Younger generations, especially those under 35 (though it may vary in different areas), speak almost exclusively standard Italian in all situations, usually with local accents and idioms. In the past, speaking in dialect was often deprecated as a sign of poor education. Regional differences can be recognized by various factors: the openness of vowels, the length of the consonants, and influence of the local dialect (for example, annà replaces andare in the area of Rome for the infinitive "to go").
Note: These Language program courses are special order and take 3 - 6 weeks for delivery.
|
