Rating: 
Summary: "Learning by Listening Only" has pluses and minuses.
Review: An excellent program. It's a blast. Perfect for commuters. One drawback is that by only listening, you may get very confused when reading or writing Italian. The above review from Helena, Montana is a clear example. The reviewer misspells "Molto bene" as (sic) "Multo Biene" because it's never seen in print during the lessons. Knowing basic letter sounds and a few words before embarking would be helpful. And get a dictionary. Even a travellers' dictionary. In spite of the drawbacks, this is incredible. The subtle infusion of correct grammar really works! I use the CD Version because there is a lot of pausing and rewinding at first while you're thinking. Pimsleur is...the man. Buy two!
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Summary: Really loosens up your tongue
Review: I agree with previous reviewers who say this course should be a supplement to a college class or a comprehensive book/tape course. Visual learners or those with an analytical thinking style will appreciate separate grammar instruction. That said, no one I know (nor myself with French or German) ever acquired fluency in a foreign language taking college-type courses alone. The Pimsleur method brings innumerable phrases/sentences to the tip of your tongue for immediate use or modification.Yes, Pimsleur is ridiculously (...), but I don't agree with suggestions to sell the course after completing it. I can tell you that the material is forgotten as quickly as it is learned if you don't practice the language. The tapes/CDs are a great (if time-consuming) way to review Italian for future trips. Also, I found the lessons to greatly improve my pronunciation, even though I have a native Italian as my classroom teacher. It's a big help to be able to replay sentences to hear subtle pronunciation differences and imitate them repeatedly. They work very well in the car. But I wonder whom other drivers think I'm talking to?
Rating: 
Summary: Good, but not great
Review: I agree with the previous reviewer. This program would be much better if it included the written transcripts of what was said and some discussion of basic grammar. Nonetheless, the 1/2 a day approach is very motivational. I am now on Italian III and I might have given up with a more traditional method.
Rating:
Summary: Phenominal
Review: I bought all 3 German Pimsleurs when I moved to Germany a year ago. Within 6 months I was prattling away in Germans and people here didn't believe I didn't speak a word of it before I moved here. Now I'm dating an Italian and have picked up this first Italian with every intention of going through the series. This is the best way to get a basic grasp of a language. Comfortably, in a way that makes you feel that you can speak and add vocabulary, rather than merely reciting set phrases like a trained monkey. Would I do this if I was only a tourist? Don't know. My boyfriend is now using my German one (with me translating the commands into Italian from English) and he's thrilled that he's learning to understand and speak German. For me, Italian is my 6th language, but German is his first foreign language. It works. If you follow it, it works. It won't teach you everything, but it will teach you the framework you need for understanding how to parse and manipulate a language you are learning. I spent 5 years with French, 5 years with Russian and 2 years with Arabic in classrooms and NEVER ever felt as comfortable with those languages having only classroom grammar drills. Let's face it, you didn't learn your mother tongue in a grammar book, filling in worksheets. You learned it by people saying things to you and making you interact with them. Pimsleur is more like teaching a man how to fish than feeding him a fish dinner... it all depends on what you want then, doesn't it?
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Summary: Learning and Living a Foreign Language
Review: I bought all 3 German Pimsleurs when I moved to Germany a year ago. Within 6 months I was prattling away in Germans and people here didn't believe I didn't speak a word of it before I moved here. Now I'm dating an Italian and have picked up this first Italian with every intention of going through the series. This is the best way to get a basic grasp of a language. Comfortably, in a way that makes you feel that you can speak and add vocabulary, rather than merely reciting set phrases like a trained monkey. Would I do this if I was only a tourist? Don't know. My boyfriend is now using my German one (with me translating the commands into Italian from English) and he's thrilled that he's learning to understand and speak German. For me, Italian is my 6th language, but German is his first foreign language. It works. If you follow it, it works. It won't teach you everything, but it will teach you the framework you need for understanding how to parse and manipulate a language you are learning. I spent 5 years with French, 5 years with Russian and 2 years with Arabic in classrooms and NEVER ever felt as comfortable with those languages having only classroom grammar drills. Let's face it, you didn't learn your mother tongue in a grammar book, filling in worksheets. You learned it by people saying things to you and making you interact with them. Pimsleur is more like teaching a man how to fish than feeding him a fish dinner... it all depends on what you want then, doesn't it?
Rating:
Summary: Excellent Intro to Italian
Review: I bought this course to learn some Italian before going on vacation to Italy. It served me very well. I was able to talk to hotel people, waiters, cabbies, and people on the street in Italian, having remembered enough vocabulary to have something to say in some common situations, and with the confidence that my pronunciation would be understood. I credit Pimsleur's approach of (1) really drilling the student in listening to and speaking like native speakers (the CD uses both a man and a woman), and (2) a good selection of what's covered in the 15 hours of material. For example, I found it particularly useful to know numbers, to be able to ask for directions, to be able to order in restaurants, and to know greetings/politenesses. The audio format is convenient - I listened in my car going back and forth to work. That makes it a little tricky to learn grammar subtlties, but the course manages to teach enough to get by. I liked the reading exercises - these gave me practice in pronouncing written Italian (even without knowing what the words meant), which was handy in asking about things on a menu, etc. I also found it very easy to use an Italian phase book/dictionary after taking this course. I found the 15 hour course fairly intense. I often needed to repeat a lesson, to feel I was getting most of it (they say to go on to the next lesson after you get 80%). That's probably partly a function of distractions while driving. My guess is I retained about 50% of my speaking learning, and at least 90% of listening, on my first pass through the lessons. (I would benefit from a second pass.) And, as indicated above, what I did retain served me very well in Italy. (By the way, you can do fine using English in Italy, but it was a lot more fun trying Italian.) The two things that would have made the course better for me would have been: (1) some of the subject matter could have fit my needs a little better; I didn't happen to need to talk a lot about family members and relatives on my trip, and it would have been helpful to know more about transportation situations (trains and boats and planes); and (2) the last CD, a compilation of all the reading lessons, would benefit from being broken up into separate tracks, instead of being one long track. It would then be much easier to review.
Rating:
Summary: Holy cow! This is easy!
Review: I commute two hours a day. This course is perfect. After the first lesson, I was speaking Italian all day. There are a few reading sections, but not enough to be difficult for someone like me. I've used it strictly in the car. It's pricey, but very easy. The 30-minutes a day is quick, and I usually do a lesson in the morning commute, and do it again in the evening commute to reinforce. Definitely worth the price. I've tried CD-ROM language courses, and they can't compare. I agree with some of the other reviews that this is not for someone who wants to read Italian. Strictly speaking.
Rating:
Summary: Bravo Dottore Pimsleur!
Review: I have tried THREE other programs prior to Pimsleur and was disinterested or unimpressed with each of them. From the very first lession I was quickly absorbed into the material. I enjoy the cd's so much that I now seem to get to my office miraculously quicker. I like that the program has limited reading material because my only real free time to study Italian is while I'm driving. If you prefer, you can always buy some reading materials to supplement it, such as a good dictionary and phrase book, however, I like that the program is not dependant on that.
Rating:
Summary: It is the best audio learning option I could find
Review: I just completed Pimsleur Italian I and I'm very pleased with it. I am now beginning Pimsleur Italian II.
The course is not perfect but it is far superior to all of the other audio courses I have tried or examined. As somone familiar with earning theory, I absolutely agree that Pimsleur duplicates the same language acquistion method we use to acquire language as children. I have, however, some suggestions for gaining the most from the course.
1. Get a good dictionary, a verb conjugation book and look up words in the lessons so that you can write them down. Aural learning is great but accompanying visual learning it is even better.
2. After listening to each lesson a few times, write them out, in sequence, on 3x5 cards and use them as "drill flash cards" (I put the English on the front and the Italian on the back and fill each card up with as many phrases as would fit). This is a bit of work but also extremely helpful for forming a Gestalt. My wife and I drill each other using the cards and it is a nice change from the CD's.
3. Since Pimsleur does not systematically or comprehensively offer those specific phrases and nouns that tourists need (e.g., helpful travel phrases, helpful in-hotel phrases and objects like "pillow," "soap," etc.), as you go, put such phrases together on "Extra" 3x5 cards and commit them to memory. This is easy within the context of the Pimsleur method because you will already be learning how to put sentences together--one of Pimsleur's strengths.
4. Each lesson starts with a dialogue. After a few listenings, be sure to write the dialogue down in sequence so that you can read aloud along with the CD. This combination of aural and visual learning greatly enhances your ability to cope with the speed with which the speakers on the CD speak the language. I found at times that ther speed was so confusing it sounded like they were using words that had not yet been introduced or included in the lesson under consideration. However, once I figured out and wrote the dialogue down (using the forward/back buttons on my CD player to re-listen multiple times) it all came very clear and my ear improved dramatically.
5. Don't expect to learn each lesson after two or three listenings. We listen to the lessons at least 10 or 15 times each. We also, for the first few times through a new lesson, hit the pause button after being asked to translate a phrase from English into Italian in order to avoid the pressure resulting from the short space of time they give you to come up with the answer-translation. We found that we could, after a few listenings, dispense with the longer pause as we learned the phrases.
6. Finally, I suggest that you wait until you've learned all the lessons before bothering with the reading practice. You can do the reading at the end because the reading is not connected in any meaningful way to the lesson that precedes it. The reading is useful however, because it helps you to read and pronounce more accurately.
In summary, I'm very pleased with the Pimsleur approach and plan to buy and study Pimsleur II and III.
Incidentally, I called Pimsleur and asked them if they sold an addendum transcript booklet of the disks but was told that such a transcript flew in the face of their theoretical belief about how one should learn a language. While I don't agree, I admire their integrity. They could sell a ton of such transcript booklets if they so chose.
Rating:
Summary: It is the best audio learning option I could find
Review: I just completed Pimsleur Italian I and I'm very pleased with it. I am now beginning Pimsleur Italian II.
The course is not perfect but it is far superior to all of the other audio courses I have tried or examined. As somone familiar with earning theory, I absolutely agree that Pimsleur duplicates the same language acquistion method we use to acquire language as children. I have, however, some suggestions for gaining the most from the course.
1. Get a good dictionary, a verb conjugation book and look up words in the lessons so that you can write them down. Aural learning is great but accompanying visual learning it is even better.
2. After listening to each lesson a few times, write them out, in sequence, on 3x5 cards and use them as "drill flash cards" (I put the English on the front and the Italian on the back and fill each card up with as many phrases as would fit). This is a bit of work but also extremely helpful for forming a Gestalt. My wife and I drill each other using the cards and it is a nice change from the CD's.
3. Since Pimsleur does not systematically or comprehensively offer those specific phrases and nouns that tourists need (e.g., helpful travel phrases, helpful in-hotel phrases and objects like "pillow," "soap," etc.), as you go, put such phrases together on "Extra" 3x5 cards and commit them to memory. This is easy within the context of the Pimsleur method because you will already be learning how to put sentences together--one of Pimsleur's strengths.
4. Each lesson starts with a dialogue. After a few listenings, be sure to write the dialogue down in sequence so that you can read aloud along with the CD. This combination of aural and visual learning greatly enhances your ability to cope with the speed with which the speakers on the CD speak the language. I found at times that ther speed was so confusing it sounded like they were using words that had not yet been introduced or included in the lesson under consideration. However, once I figured out and wrote the dialogue down (using the forward/back buttons on my CD player to re-listen multiple times) it all came very clear and my ear improved dramatically.
5. Don't expect to learn each lesson after two or three listenings. We listen to the lessons at least 10 or 15 times each. We also, for the first few times through a new lesson, hit the pause button after being asked to translate a phrase from English into Italian in order to avoid the pressure resulting from the short space of time they give you to come up with the answer-translation. We found that we could, after a few listenings, dispense with the longer pause as we learned the phrases.
6. Finally, I suggest that you wait until you've learned all the lessons before bothering with the reading practice. You can do the reading at the end because the reading is not connected in any meaningful way to the lesson that precedes it. The reading is useful however, because it helps you to read and pronounce more accurately.
In summary, I'm very pleased with the Pimsleur approach and plan to buy and study Pimsleur II and III.
Incidentally, I called Pimsleur and asked them if they sold an addendum transcript booklet of the disks but was told that such a transcript flew in the face of their theoretical belief about how one should learn a language. While I don't agree, I admire their integrity. They could sell a ton of such transcript booklets if they so chose.
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