Most mixed reviews came from misunderstanding the purpose of this course. With these repetition exercises, you will prepare yourself for the practice of the Italian language caught live, at the very beginner level with our course number three. Most people study Italian for years and can't really speak it afterward. It will not be your case.

Originally, this was the first volume of an audio CD series. We included both volumes here. You will work on the alphabet, numbers, and verb conjugations. You will have a gentle and progressive approach to very common verbs and their most used tenses. You will practice with multiple examples, repeating and filling in the blanks. How did we choose the words that you should know first? We interviewed Italian natives and let them speak about the subject of their choice. We then selected a minute and a half of these conversations and isolated every word pronounced, classifying them into basic, primary, and secondary vocabulary.

In the basic list, we put all the words that appear systematically in every conversation. Table, crayon-pencil, or avion-airplane would be included in the primary vocabulary list but not in the basic vocabulary list where you will find words like: for, that, what, I, of, in, am, etc....

We made an interesting discovery: 63 percent of all words used by people when they speak are basic words regardless of the theme of the conversation. After you work with these recordings, you will know 63 percent of every conversation you happen to hear or be a part of. You will be ready to go further and work on real dialogs. If your intention is to study grammar or learn a few sentences to get by when you are in Italy, this is not for you.

The way you will speak with SmartItalian is the natural way. You will sound like an Italian person very early learning Italian, and you will feel very confident speaking Italian.