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Drive Time Italian (Beginners Level) Reviews

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Category: Teach Yourself Italian Guides (AKA Italian Learning Courses & Software)



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Drive Time Italian (Beginners Level) Review


by No1Reviews.com.

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Editor's Review:

Drive Time Italian is an audio-only teach yourself Italian course for beginners. Being audio-only, it is highly portable - in fact,  it is specifically designed for those who want to convert the time they spend sitting in the car into productive Italian learning. Users can also listen to the CDs whilst cooking or cleaning the house as well as rip them onto Mp3 player for Italian learning whilst jogging or walking the dog. The audio-only format is great for those of us who learn best this way, although there is a small student guide including dialog scripts, grammar summaries and vocab lists if you like to be able to see what you are learning in writing.

The course itself will take you through various contexts in which users are exposed to new sets of vocabulary. Each lesson gradually refreshes, reviews and builds upon what you have learned previously in order to increase your confidence in expressing yourself in a variety of situations using increasingly complex grammar and sentence structure. We found all the topics covered quite interesting and the diction of both the English speakers and the native Italian speakers clear. Upon completion of this course you should be able to express yourself and understand Italian to an intermediate level.

As we progressed with Drive Time Italian some drawbacks did begin to surface. The first CD is great for beginners as the pace is slow and you are given plenty of time to repeat words and internalize new grammatical concepts. However, from the second CD onwards the pace accelerates alarmingly. You are left  with very little time to repeat words and as soon as you think you are beginning to understand a certain grammatical concept you are rushed on. This left us feeling a little bewildered and we had to concentrate very hard and keep pausing and rewinding which is not ideal when you also have to concentrate on driving. We also found the lesson numbering quite annoying as it had nothing to do with the track number and it was consequently difficult to remember which lesson we were on.

Overall, Drive Time Italian may not be ideal for complete beginners unless you are willing to put a lot of effort into following the fast paced lessons. Intermediate users will probably have learned much of the material before but may still get something out of this product as a refresher course. Experienced language learners (especially those who have studied a Latin language) who want to start learning Italian should be able to keep up with the pace and are likely to appreciate the challenging nature of this beginners' course.

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