Italian Short Story Collection for Beginners: Develop Your Reading and Listening Skills in the Italian Language

Jeffrey Kong: Nice

Singapore on Oct 29, 2023

pino mancini: I lower level intermediate and I am finding lots of new vocabulary in this book. It’s smooth reading so far. I read a story here and there in between other books. I can recommend it.

Australia on Jun 30, 2023

veneresssa: What a great book for those wanting to learn Italian than by reading short stories. Love how you have both Italian & English versions for a better understanding.
great quality book

Australia on Feb 25, 2023

Todd: I'm not exactly a beginner, but I'd struggle to describe myself as intermediate either. So I was finding it challenging to material pitched at a level that pushed my learning forward without demoralizing me.

The stories in this book are relatively easy to read. Using the Kindle App on my phone makes is easier to check (translate) words straight away, plus the layout is very helpful: Read a section and then get a list of vocab translation. At end there is a summary and then a full section by section translation. Plus there is the free audio too which is brilliant. So my routine has become:

1. Read story once from start to finish. A bit slow as have to keep checking words and if my understanding is correct
2. Do the little Q&A at the end to check I've been paying attention to the story!
3. Listen to the audio while going through story a second time. Way faster, but thanks to reading it 1st time, there is a fighting chance of following the narrator.
4. Read the full translation to help solidify the finer bits.
5. Repeat audio about a million times to try to get it to sink in. Accept I've not learnt to walk yet and move on to the next story!!!

United Kingdom on Feb 18, 2022

Jonathan Tudge: The stories are fairly short, and designed (more or less) for adults to read. Some of the more difficult words and expressions are translated, but there's a funny mix of some words that are pretty simple even for a beginner that are translated and some words and expressions that are well beyond me that are not translated. To some extent, that's bound to happen, I suppose. What I like best about it reading it on Kindle is that I have an Italian dictionary on it (it was a free addition to the Kindle I bought) and so I can easily look up words that I don't know, and also highlight those words for later study (at least that's the idea).

United States on Aug 20, 2019

S. tamburin: There are no English translations here other than some of the vocabulary and some of it may be words you already know while the ones not translated are ones you don't know, but all the beginner and intermediate books are similar. If you are a true beginner, this is probably not for you, yet. I have been teaching myself Italian, on and off, for a few years. It is not easy teaching yourself at my age, but I reached the point, finally, where I can read this. I do know a lot of the words that are translated and some that are not, so that is annoying but after buying many books like this I know that anything I can read is hard to find. I really do like the ones that translate a whole paragraph from Italian to English each and every paragraph, but there are not many. Also, know that exact translations don't always work so don't be put off if any Italian to English language book that is not an exact translation word for word. The best thing about this book, though, is you can hear it on your computer or download it to some other devices so you can hone your pronunciation. For someone who is not just beginning to learn, you can figure out the words you don't know by the content. So, since...

United States on Dec 25, 2018

Jeremiah: So, I am not a wide reader and I’m just new in Kindle. Maybe the adventurous side of me and price makes it justifiable too, for $3.99!? Ill just swing off my Dutch Bros for the day! Although I can do some context clues to at least make it closer into my understanding so I decided to put this on my Kindle, since Italian language is one of my bucket list in learning new language.

Funny to think that I have “So little” proficiency of this language. I only know Italian by their food.. ITALIAN PASTA! A wide eater myself, sometimes I eat pasta with this for an added effect. Try it!

It did not benefit me for now I guess, yet this will be a very good exercising skills for my language exploration! Good thing there’s an audio that you can download, at least I know how to pronounce the word correctly.

It was difficult for me to figure out how to understand this book at first, but unlike other books with the same category, the kinda-like-footnote help me construct the sentence. I also like the simplicity and flexibility of how the sentences and spacing are well place altogether, like as if you read a lot of pages in a very short time.

Maybe having some...

United States on Sep 30, 2017

Ariel: I’m an Italian-American, I know very little Italian, only what I’ve learned from hearing my grandparents speak it occasionally. My native language is English and I know some Spanish, which helps a bit. This book is better than I anticipated. I really like the way it’s set up. There are bolded words/phrases in the stories and after each paragraph there is a glossary for the bolded words/phrases translating them to English. What I did was listened with the audio first then looked through the glossary and listened again. The bolded words/phrases help well with being able to connect what the sentence is saying because you know the context.
So, you’re learning from the glossary but you’re also picking up on repeated words and understanding what they mean. By the third time I went back over the paragraph I was basically able to read the Italian myself, which is absolutely incredible! Also, there’s a short multiple choice at the end of each story to quiz yourself. I’ve never seen anything set up this way that helps you learn and comprehend so quickly. Even just going over a paragraph or two while you’re lying in bed at night or waiting at the doctor’s office would be...

United States on Jul 20, 2017

Sierra R: This book is excellent for beginners who are excited to learn Italian! I have been looking for different ways to tackle learning the Italian language without having to spend tons of money on college classes and this book is what I needed. It has a total of 10 short stories that are completely in Italian. At first it seems daunting to read, but the book supplies vocabulary words next to each page so that you can understand the main idea of the story as you read. There is also a summary and questions that follow each story in case you missed the plot as you were reading. The book is most useful if you know the basics to Italian sentence structure and grammar or have attended a beginner’s Italian class, but this knowledge is not necessary to start teaching you the Italian language with this book. The best part in this book is that it comes with audios that read each story for you. Probably one of the hardest obstacles I have faced when learning Italian is the pronunciation and the word flow. Just listening to the audios made it so much easier for me to learn how to say the words, instead of just how to read them!

Most people say the best way to learn a new language is to...

United States on May 10, 2017

Amazon Customer: As a newcomer with regards to the Italian language, I decided to give this book a try as I wanted to put what I have learned so far to the test and what better way to do this than using a book designed for beginners?
Having used a number of online resources to hone the basics of Italian, I was looking forward into sinking my teeth into Italian Short Stories for Beginners, and was impressed with the alternative approach.
The book is simply laid out with 10 short stories in Italian consisting of around 1,500 words each, with every tale accompanied by a summary in English and a glossary of key words, handily highlighted throughout the foreign text. This makes accuracy checking nice and easy, whilst also providing a reference point when one becomes stuck.
I also liked that it comes complete with audio, helping with pronunciations and giving a sense of tempo. The audio files can be either streamed over Dropbox or downloaded for offline use, which is a convenient feature.
One problem I did encounter, however, is that I struggled with some of the stories. Although the book’s title includes ‘for beginners,’ I would describe the text as being of an intermediate level...

United Kingdom on Apr 22, 2017