Short Stories in Italian for Beginners

Cute set of short stories. Easy to follow, glossary of unfamiliar words included, and some practice questions per chapter.

I know beginners Italian; basic grammars and few hundred words. This book is a fun read. For every page, I would know about half of the stuff, I would guess more than half of the unknown, and figure out the rest by finishing the story. I wouldn’t use a dictionary for the unknown words until I finish the whole story, which is about 4 chapters. At the end of each chapter, there is a list of few definitions that the chapters uses, and some questionnaire to test your understanding. I try to answer the questions prior looking up the definitions of words I don’t know. The stories are not very exciting and it makes sense why. The story emphasizes on using basic expressions, basic words, without complicating the concept (like children’s book kinda). So it makes sense that the stories are not in depth. I believe it is a fantastic must have for Italian language lovers and learners.

I bought this while living in Italy for one month, having completed around two months of Duolingo 4-7x a week. So my level was just beyond beginner, and I wanted to experiment with the comprehensible input-only method of language learning. What I found with this book, first of all, is how much fun and how encouraging it was to be able to read, understand, and finish stories. It didn't feel like nearly as much work as the usual textbook method. At the same time, as I got further into the book I found myself recognizing and understanding many more often-used words and phrases used by the locals. After a week or so I even mustered up the courage to have some very basic exchanges in Italian, without ever having taken a test or opened a notebook. This is definitely a fun way to enhance your learning and acquire a natural sense of grammar and gain vocabulary, all the while creating a sense of accomplishment and building your confidence.

The book is cute and certainly helpful for beginning readers but contains definite shortcomings and language errors. The scenarios described are not at all realistic for young university students in Europe. Taking a taxi and staying in a hotel would blow through their budget in one day. Take a bus to find a place to eat in Rome? You have to be kidding. There are so many choices literally everywhere within walking distance in Rome that choosing becomes the problem. And, poor Giulia is timid and shy. A bit sexist to sexist to say the least. Ok. All in fun, but not using subjective after “Mia sorella non sa dove sono”. Well, not all Italians follow grammar rules, but “Adesso siamo a mangiare qualcosa (p.24). No, no native Italian speaker would ever say that. My conclusion, it is a fun book with definitely strange Italian at times and written by someone not of the Italian culture.

If you started learning the beautiful language of Italian, this is a great beginner book for you! This book starts with stories containing relatively easy Italian words and progresses to a bit more challenging ones.I would 100% suggest reading it the way the author recommends, which is by reading it in Italian even if you struggle, so you can use hints surrounding the words to see if you can create a subconscious connection with that word. Read it once or twice in Italian to try and figure it out and then read it in English to see if you got the main plot right!An extra tip would be to highlight words that might seem too long or complicated for you, so you can remember to link them to the English counterpart after!

Awesome book

Yes, it's a children's book, but if you're just getting into the language, this is the way to go if you want to start reading Italian.

I've almost finished this book, and there's a lot I like about it. I've done Rosetta Stone and Duolingo all the way through, but those only take you so far. I needed to take the next step in my learning. The stories in this book are the perfect difficulty for me. Not so easy that I understand everything right away, but easy enough that I get the gist and can figure things out. One concern I have is that apparently these stories are written in one language and just translated to a bunch of other languages without changing much. So the stories aren't indicative of Italian culture and, I'm told, have sentences that may be grammatically correct but aren't something native speakers would really say. The other issue I have is that the answer keys seem wrong. At the end of every chapter are 5 relatively easy questions, but more often then not, the answer to at least one of these questions given in the key is wrong. At first I thought it might be an issue with my comprehension, but I even went and reread stories translating carefully line by line, and the answer they give is clearly wrong. It makes you wonder about the quality of the book in general. Otherwise I am enjoying the book and feel like I'm learning. I just hope the quality of the Italian is good enough that I'm actually learning the right things!