Learn Italian with Paul Noble for Beginners – Part 1

Italian Made Easy with Your Personal Language Coach

By: Paul Noble

Narrated by: Paul Noble

Length: 4 hrs and 24 mins

Publisher's summary

No grammar tests. No memory drills. No chance of failure.

Welcome to Learn with Paul Noble – a unique, tried and tested language learning method that has been used by almost a million people to speak fluently and confidently in no time at all.

Take a simple, relaxed approach to learning a language that has been proven to succeed every time. Unlike more traditional language learning courses, Paul Noble’s unique method has no grammar tests, no memory drills and no chance of failure. Whatever your experience with languages, whether you’re an absolute beginner or someone with basic knowledge who wants to improve their ability, this is the course to get you speaking Italian quickly, easily, and effortlessly. Just listen, interact and learn wherever you are.

In this audiobook, Paul will introduce you to the basics of the Italian language and guide you through over 4 hours of practical, everyday scenarios that will build your confidence.

You will learn a huge range of vocabulary in no time at all, and be able to quickly make your new knowledge work for you in a variety of everyday scenarios. A native-speaking Italian expert will help you to perfect your pronunciation as you progress through the course. Language learning has finally become fun, enjoyable and accessible.

A downloadable booklet is also included to use as a reference and revision tool. The accompanying booklet is available here: http://collinsdictionary.com/resources

This download is Part One of a three-part course. Once you’ve finished Part One, download Learn Italian with Paul Noble for Beginners – Part Two.

PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying PDF will be available in your Audible Library along with the audio.

©2010 HarperCollins Publishers Ltd (P)2010 HarperCollins Publishers Ltd

Mind Numbingly Boring

Any additional comments?

I can’t understand why anyone would think that Paul Noble is such a great language teacher. I literally fell asleep just listening to his “ground rules” on the audio sample on this page. I still ordered the program and continued sleeping through it as he droned on endlessly in a low-energy monotone.
I don’t know about you, but I want to speak ITALIAN. If you’ve ever heard real Italians speak, you’ll notice that they are extremely HIGH ENERGY people with a lively language.
To give you some contrast, check out the Power Italian 1 Accelerated by Mark Frobose. The free audio sample will explain why I think “Learn Italian the Natural Way” should be named “Learn Italian (Maybe) While You Sleep”.
Power Italian is much better in every way.
So is “Learn in Your Car Italian” by Penton Overseas. They blast you with a gong every now and then between lessons, but at least you stay awake.
I also learned some Italian with a memory technique that’s almost as good as Frobose’s in Power Italian. It’s the famous Pimsleur programs, which are also quite good, but just use a very limited vocabulary base.

Painless and This Works, Really!

Where does Collins Italian with Paul Noble - Learn Italian the Natural Way, Part 1 rank among all the audiobooks you’ve listened to so far?

This is not a story but it is a fabulous way to learn a language. Fully recommend this program. If you are worried that you can't learn Italian, stop worrying, start listening. Always enjoyed a British accent, bonus.

What other book might you compare Collins Italian with Paul Noble - Learn Italian the Natural Way, Part 1 to and why?

Not a story, educational. Closest would be one of The Great Courses.

Which scene was your favorite?

When he said....posse prenotare un camera con banjo? My heart melted.

If you were to make a film of this book, what would the tag line be?

Speak Italian To Me

Any additional comments?

il romantico

Good but not perfect

Good structure and sets up core principles fairly well.
My only complaint is the person doing the Italian pronunciation could have been more articulate. It is a little bit hard to hear at times.
But I recommend it still.

Terrible

The “ato” in “tomato”....come on. There are much better audiobooks to learn Italian than this British nonsensical garbage.

boring but good

the narrator's voice and the responders are extremely boring and difficult to hear. However if you turn it up very loudly the information is all very good and easy to learn. Gives you all sorts of relevant information to learning very basic stuff

Really helpful and easy!

I felt like I could speak sentences I Italian in the first 20 minutes. He teaches by repetition, the way babies learn to speak. He also focuses on what is the same about Italian and
English, instead of what is different. Love it!

The BEST language learning audio series

One month ago, I bought Pimsleur Italian Level 1, Lessons 1-5 and 6-10; Innovative Language Learning's "Italian Survival Phrases"; and this, Collins Italian with Paul Noble, Part 1. While all had pros and cons, Collins Italian with Paul Noble was BY FAR the best of the lot. I felt I had a much better grasp of the language, more words to work with, and more confidence overall after listening to this audiobook just one time.
I listened to the Pimsleur audiobooks first. The native speakers talk very fast, much faster than the Collins speaker, but I like how they broke down the words and phrases from end to beginning. However, they give you almost no time to reply before the native speaker cuts in with the correct response. I had to listen to each lesson twice before I "got" it. "Italian Survival Phrases" was the same way. This makes it nearly impossible to learn in the car. That's the only time I have! Also, after starting Collins, I learned that Pimsleur had started me out wrong, teaching phrases with the pronoun for emphasis before telling me that people don't really do that, basically setting in place the habit for incorrectly adding emphasis in everyday speech before saying, no, never mind, don't do that. Collins teaches you in the opposite way— here's how Italians actually talk, and if you need extra emphasis, add the pronoun.
In addition, Collins, in teaching about the Latin roots of common English words, reveals that native English speakers essentially already know thousands of Italian words-- any word that ends with -TION or -IC or -ICAL, for example. This blew my mind. By simply changing the ending of these words, I already know the pronunciation and meaning of thousands of Italian words, and I just started learning Italian a month ago! This gave me a huge amount of confidence that I can actually learn a language that seemed impossibly daunting before.
"Italian Survival Phrases" did have great Italian survival phrases, without question. But the whole thing went so fast that I felt this was not made for a beginner listening to their first Italian phrasebook. Also, the musical cue that it was time to repeat what the speaker had taught got very annoying, very fast, and was completely unnecessary.
One final and maybe minor nitpick about Pimsleur: As soon as they teach you how to say, "I would like to drink something," they teach you how to say "wine" and "beer," but no other Italian words for beverages. Much of the second audiobook revolves around ordering wine and beer or asking someone to drink wine or beer with you. Since my husband and I don't drink alcohol, this was not at all helpful. Why would I want to learn words that will have no impact on my travel? Collins Italian with Paul Noble taught the word for "coffee." Humorously enough, I don't drink coffee either, but at least Paul Noble taught enough other words that the entire audiobook did not seem to dwell on this one concept, of ordering coffee.
Only Collins Italian with Paul Noble, Part 1 taught me much of what I needed to know and gave me the confidence to speak Italian right away. This is without a doubt the best language learning audio series out there -- highly recommended and worth every penny. I will definitely be continuing with the other books in the series

Great intro to the language!

I was skeptical at first but ended these lessons with the ability to string together short sentences. The repetition was just enough to keep the information memorized.

Learn Italian the tourist way

Any additional comments?

It's not a bad way to start to learn tourist Italian. You can start to form more sentence using the basics you get here just by increasing your vocabulary. Someone wrote that they didn't trust the italian translation because their italian speaking friend said one of the phrases was not translated correctly. Well, My Italian friends say its ok.

Excellent

Clear concise and logical instruction for an adult learner. This is the best basic Italian course available to English speakers. Thank you, Paul.