The Easiest and Fastest Way to Learn Italian
Whether you want to travel, communicate with friends or colleagues, reconnect with family, or just understand more of what’s going on in the world around you, learning Italian will expand your horizons and immeasurably enrich your life.
The best part is that it doesn’t have to be difficult or take years to master. Thirty minutes a day is all it takes, and we get you speaking right from the first day. Pimsleur courses use a scientifically proven method that puts you in control of your learning. If you’ve tried other language learning methods but found they simply didn’t stick, then you owe it to yourself to give Pimsleur a try.
Why Pimsleur?
- Quick + Easy – Only 30 minutes a day.
- Portable + Flexible – Core lessons can be done anytime, anywhere, and easily fit into your busy life.
- Proven Method – Works when other methods fail.
- Self-Paced – Go fast or go slow – it’s up to you.
- Based in Science – Developed using proven research on memory and learning.
- Cost-effective – Less expensive than classes or immersion, and features all native speakers.
- Genius – Triggers your brain’s natural aptitude to learn.
- Works for everyone – Recommended for ages 13 and above.
What’s Included?
- 30, 30-minute audio lessons
- 90 minutes of reading instruction to provide you practice reading Italian
- in total, 16.5 hours of audio, all featuring native speakers
- a Reading Booklet
What You’ll Learn
Italian Level 5 is designed to be taken after Pimsleur’s Italian Level 4. Thirty 30-minute lessons totaling 15 hours of spoken Italian language learning, plus 90 minutes of reading practice. Italian Level 5 builds upon skills taught in Pimsleur’s Italian Levels 1-4. You’ll be speaking and understanding Italian with near fluency and with a broad range of conversational skills. In Level 5 the pace and conversation moves quite rapidly, accelerating exposure to new vocabulary and structures, approaching native speed and comprehension. You’ll learn to speak more in-depth about your personal life and emotional state, and be able to create complex sentences using a mix of tenses and moods.
A few of the topics included in Italian Level 5:
- Travel and leisure: making vacation plans, famous landmarks, festivals, reading, hiking, dining and movies, malls, delayed and canceled flights, lost luggage, car trouble, filing a police report, getting a speeding ticket, driving dos and don’ts, train travel
- Food and drink: restaurants, grocery shopping, organic food and wine, smells and tastes, what to bring, traditional foods
- The environment: weather, alternative energy, trash and recycling, changing landscapes, pollution
- Communication: staying in touch, charging laptops and cell phones, internet service, bad reception, and texting
- Family and relationships: family traditions, marriage, looking for love, kissing, falling in love, supporting each other, moving, cultural differences
- Money: making change, banking, credit cards, emergencies
- Health and wellness: catching a cold or the flu, gaining and losing weight, exercising, hot springs treatments, yoga, meditation
- Personal life and emotions: empathy, regret, hope, worry, boredom, joy and sadness, good and bad luck, beliefs and superstitions, good wishes
Reading Lessons in the form of a short story are included after Lesson 30.
The Pimsleur Method
We make no secret of what makes this powerful method work so well. Paul Pimsleur spent his career researching and perfecting the precise elements anyone can use to learn a language quickly and easily. Here are a few of his “secrets”:
The Principle of Anticipation
In the nanosecond between a cue and your response, your brain has to work to come up with the right word. Having to do this boosts retention, and cements the word in your mind.
Core Vocabulary
Words, phrases, and sentences are selected for their usefulness in everyday conversation. We don’t overwhelm you with too much, but steadily increase your ability with every lesson.
Graduated Interval Recall
Reminders of new words and structures come up at the exact interval for maximum retention and storage into your long-term memory.
Organic Learning
You work on multiple aspects of the language simultaneously. We integrate grammar, vocabulary, rhythm, melody, and intonation into every lesson, which allows you to experience the language as a living, expressive form of human culture.
Learning in Context
Research has shown that learning new words in context dramatically accelerates your ability to remember. Every scene in every Pimsleur lesson is set inside a conversation between two people. There are no drills, and no memorization necessary for success.
Active Participation
The Pimsleur Method + active learner participation = success. This method works with every language and every learner who follows it. You gain the power to recall and use what you know, and to add new words easily, exactly as you do in English.
The Italian Language
Italian is the official language of Italy and San Marino, and one of the official languages of Switzerland, Croatia, and Slovenia. Italian is spoken by about 58 million people in Italy, 24,000 in San Marino, 840,000 in Switzerland, another million in other European countries, and approximately 5 million in North and South America. Historically, Italian is a daughter language of Latin. Italian uses the Roman alphabet and the pronunciation of the language follows the spelling very closely.
Tech Talk
- CDs are formatted for playing in all CD players, including car players, and users can copy files for use in iTunes or Windows Media Player.
