Reddit reviews Practice Makes Perfect: Complete Italian Grammar (Practice Makes Perfect Series)

Alright, here goes nothing! Kinda Long list, sorry for wall of text!

YouTube

• Learn Italian with Lucrezia
  
  
• Tia Taylor (More culture than anything; but American Girl who lives (or lived) in Italy for awhile. While I feel like she tries to make videos JUST for views, some of her earlier ones are very informational!
  
  
• Debby Arts: I really enjoy drawing, and I came across her one day. Her main youtube channel is in English, but she does have an Italian version.
  
  
• FavijTV is a decent gamer youtuber. I don't watch him that often, but decent none-the-less.
  
  Twitch.tv
  
  
• Rengoland (my personal favorite, super chill dude, also fluent in English but streams in Italian for his viewers)
  
  
• Paoloidolo
  
  Sites
  
  
• I believe Uni. of Vermont Italian
  
  
• Italian Grammar Exercises!
  
  
• Reading of Italian Passages This site has everything though.
  
  Here are all of my books that I bought, I can't find some of the old ones that were given to me though!
  
  
• Practice Makes Perfect: Italian
  
  
• English Grammar for Students of Italian
  
  
• 501 Italian Verbs
  
  
• I love this buy, I dislike Anki Vocabulary Cards
  
  
• Same thing as above, but grammar
  
  
• Regret this buy, but I own it: Living Language
  
  
• This is a picture vocab book. A SIMILAR ITEM (i.e. not this one specifically) was given to me when I first was learning Italian. Picture Voacb Book
  
  
• Grammar cheat sheet
  
  
• And I have some school books from uni classes I took.
  
  Italian movies I recommend
  
  
• Benvenuti al Sud
  
  
• Benvenuti al Nord
  
  
• La Vita è Bella
  
  
• Un americano a Roma
  
  
• La grande Guerra
  
  
• Il Postino
  
  Others
  
  Other resources include the free ones that are giving in the language resources! I also go over to /r/Italy and /r/Italianlearning and read topics and help others with Italian!

What I did was duolingo and a grammar book (I used this http://www.amazon.com/Practice-Makes-Perfect-Complete-Italian/dp/0071603670/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1422064174&sr=8-1&keywords=italian+grammar , not free obviously but I think it's worth it to make sure you get an analytical knowledge of the grammar) to get started, eventually move on to listening to people on youtube like this guy http://youtu.be/4xXT-ysjrKE?list=PLTvJgY2rGJY8c5MzWbfjrPP2E5-I6F_Hd who makes videos for learners

Then I moved on to reading fables and passages from the Bible. Lingocracy is useful for that. I also started adding the words I didn't know onto memrise and using that daily.

I haven't pursued Italian as much as I should but I gained a moderate amount of reading comprehension doing that within less than two months.

Yes it is. But it also has some vocabulary and other notes included to help develop your Italian beyond the grammar.

Practice Makes Perfect Complete Italian Grammar

After studying Italian for about 6 months, I decided I really needed to dive into the grammar because there seemed to be a lot of exceptions and general concepts that I wasn't fully understaning. I purchased Practice Makes Perfect and I'm almost halfway through the book. It has helped tremendously thus far.

What I've done is gone through and done all of the exercises in the chapter. I circle the questions that I get wrong and others that I think might be useful and I put them in a Cloze Deletion deck in Anki. When the sentence comes up, I have to type in the missing word or words. Here are some examples:

Front of Anki Card:

Dov'è Diane? Non l'ho [...] per mesi. (vedere)

Front of Anki Card:

Ho dato quegli stivali ai miei amici ieri.

[...] ho dato quegli stivali ieri.



This forces me to type in the missing word to complete the card. It really helps with showing what my grammatical weaknesses are exactly.

I almost bought this last week, but can't justify the cost right now (I'm working at a pretty slow pace so probably can't rent it). I ended up buying two other books:

1. Practice Makes Perfect: Complete Italian Grammar
   
2. Easy Italian Reader
   
   They're being delivered today so I'm not sure if they live up to the reviews; I can update my thoughts on them later.
   
   EDIT
   
   These are my first thoughts after working through the first few pages of each book.
   
   

• Practice Makes Perfect: Seems like it's going to be great as a general overview, and the review questions are actually tolerable unlike the countless French homework assignments I suffered through in high school. It's hard to judge at the moment because I've already been using Duolingo for a while so obviously the first few chapters are going to be pure review for me.
  
  
• Easy Italian Reader: This book focuses more on reading passages; after reading small chunks of text you read and answer questions completely in Italian, and so far this is exactly what I was looking for; something that would allow me to practice reading stories and passages in Italian without being forced to read young children's books (hoping to read the first Harry Potter book in the near future). It's a bit dry (the first story focuses on two friends and their school life and whatnot), but I think it's perfect for someone who wants to start reading Italian early in their studies.

If you are in the US:

https://www.amazon.com/Practice-Makes-Perfect-Complete-Italian/dp/0071603670

https://www.amazon.com/Mastering-Italian-Vocabulary-Thematic-Approach/dp/0764123955

https://www.amazon.com/Practice-Makes-Perfect-Complete-Italian/dp/0071603670

This will get you to B2, maybe C1. It's what I used when learning Italian, and at this point, I just find online Italian chats to refine my vocabulary, grammar, and what not.


I found it effective to learn the basic grammar before I began vocabulary study. I would write English words with Italian grammar in order develop my grammar skills.

Couple those with Duolingo.

I plan on using the German editions of those while I take German 1 and 2.

Good luck!

(Also, please pardon any poor writing in my response. I'm a bit tired and I'm not focusing very hard)

EDIT: You can find those books cheaper.