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The
Buongiorno Italia is a beginner's Italian language course from the
BBC (and already I am slightly prejudiced as I love the courses
that the BBC produce). The course comes complete with 3 x 60 minute
audio CDs and over a 300 page course book.
The CDs and book are divided into 20 short units and the book contains
dialogues, language notes, information about Italy and vocabulary
and practice activities. The CDs are designed to help develop listening
and speaking skills with pronunciation practice, conversations and
interviews.
The course book
has a grammar section, pronunciation sections and an answer section
which gives the answers to the activities. At random intervals (well
they seem randomly placed) there are sections called lettre A, B,
and so on - this is a transcript of the audio on the CD. You can
then answer questions in the book, which mirrors the type of thing
you would have to do in a GCSE exam. The book is designed to be
used alongside the CDs as they contain dialogues and interactive
exercises to do whilst listening.
The woman who introduces the course sounds a little odd at first.
I'm not sure if she is an authentic Italian or from England. Some
of her words sound like she has an Italian accent, whereas with
others, she sounds like she has never left England. I prefer it
when you have a native speaker (I suppose she could be a native
speaker and have lived in England for a long while!).
The CD starts
by giving you a list of Italian words, but you are not told what
they are in English. You have to pronounce the words after you hear
them, but I didn't really like this bit of the course, as I like
to know what it is I am saying first (but then I'm no language course
designer and I'm sure the BBC do know what they're doing!). The
exercises during the course are really helpful to test what you
have picked up. The number exercise was good as they use a conversation
in a bar scenario and you have to listen and then pick out the numbers
you have heard. The conversation was at a good pace and so the exercise
wasn't too difficult (this was a real confidence boost as I had
never learnt Italian before and to be able to recognise numbers
already was fantastic).
The course instructions
are given to you in Italian and then repeated in English, this is
a good way of learning instructions as they are repeated throughout
the course so you are picking up new language without even realising
it.
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I
didn't just want a language course which gave me the holiday
basics without the cultural background or the grammar of the
language. The BBC offers you the whole linguistic package
and it is definitely worth a go!
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I
found Italian quite easy to understand as it is similar to Spanish
which I'd already been learning. It was easy for me to deduce what
was being said, rather than to have to look up every word in a dictionary.
The course doesn't give you every single word that is said, they
just give you the key vocabulary and expressions. I found this better;
as firstly it is not repetitive and secondly it makes you feel you
are picking up the language a lot faster.
After each new
section there is a summary of what you have just learnt, with a
very basic grammar note. There are also interactive activities,
but I found that I couldn't do these without listening to the section
on the CD a couple more times so I could get the hang of it.
The dialogues
on the CD are useful to hear Italian in everyday contexts and to
get used to the Italian accent. I found some of the pronunciation
difficult. When reading the course book, a lot of the words were
similar to French and Spanish and I had a tendency to say the words
with a French accent, which was, of course, completely wrong. I
decided to bang the pronunciation into my head and listened to the
CDs more and more to get used to saying it differently - this seemed
to work, although I suppose I will see when I speak to an authentic
Italian!
Throughout the
course book, after each section you can learn more about the country
and culture of Italy. I found this a good way of taking a break
from the course and I was still learning about the country rather
than just stopping the CD for 10 minutes. A sort of educational
break if you like.
Overall this
course is great. The Italian that I learnt is more than enough to
be able to go to Italy and have a proper conversation with the locals.
This is what I look for in a language course - I didn't just want
a course which gave me the holiday basics without the cultural background
or the grammar of the language. The BBC offers you the whole linguistic
package and it is definitely worth a go! Dieci out of dieci for
me!
Click
here for more information and to purchase BBC
Buongiorno Italia language courses.
There are other BBC comprehensive language
courses for French, German, Italian and Spanish at beginner
level.
Click
here for more information about all BBC
Languages courses.
Click here for more information about other Italian
language courses.
If
you require any further information,
please contact us!
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