Colloquial Italian 2
The Next Step in Language Learning
Sylvia Lymbery, Sandra Silipo
- 213 pages
- English
- ePUB (mobile friendly)
- Available on iOS & Android
Colloquial Italian 2
The Next Step in Language Learning
Sylvia Lymbery, Sandra Silipo
About This Book
Do you know Italian already and want to go a stage further? If you're planning a visit to Italy, need to brush up your Italian for work, or are simply doing a course, Colloquial Italian 2 is the ideal way to refresh your knowledge of the language and to extend your skills.
Colloquial Italian 2 is designed to help those involved in self-study; structured to give you the opportunity to listen to and read lots of modern, everyday Italian, it has also been developed to work systematically on reinforcing and extending your grasp of Italian grammar and vocabulary.
Key features of Colloquial Italian 2 include:
- Revision material to help consolidate and build up your basics
- A wided range of contemporary authentic documents, both written and audio
- Lots of spoken and written exercises in each unit
- Highlighted key structures and phrases, a Grammar reference and detailed answer keys
- A broad range of situations, focusing on day to day life in Italy.
Audio material to accompany the course is available to download free in MP3 format from www.routledge.com/cw/colloquials. Recorded by native speakers, the audio material features the dialogues and texts from the book and will help develop your listening and pronunciation skills.
Frequently asked questions
Information
1 Presentiamoci!
- â meet some Italians
- â check your knowledge of the form and use of the present tense:
- â regular verbs
- â look at the use of da and the present tense
- â revise numbers and dates
- â practise talking about yourself
Dialogues
Exercise 1
- read the questions below
- listen to the recording once or twice without looking at the written text
- try to answer the questions
- listen again, this time looking at the text
- Whose family name doesnât sound Italian at all? Is it?
- Which speaker knows three foreign languages?
- Which speaker has been living in England for less than a year?
Dialogue 1 (Audio 1: 2)
Dialogue 2 (Audio 1: 3)
Vocabulary â
ho 28 anni avere x anni | I am 28 (years old) to be x years old |
non mi viene in mente | I canât think of one (lit. one doesnât come into my mind; âoneâ being an example of a name) |
tipo Sgombrovich | like Sgombrovich (tipo used instead of come is common in spoken Italian) |
nome / cognome | first, given name/surname |
Language points â
Exercise 2
Teresa è italiana.
- La prima persona _____ Teresa. _____ di Napoli ma adesso _____ a Norwich. _____ allâuniversitĂ , _____ un dottorato in traduzione letteraria, quindi _____ le lingue. _____ a Norwich da piĂš di cinque anni.
- Francesca un cognome che non suona italiano. Questo perche il suo cognome da Gorizia. Nellâarea di Trieste ci molti cognomi che quasi russi perche in âichâ. II cognome di Francesca in âigâ, che e simile.
- ⢠Check your answers in the Key to exercises at the back of the book. The present of regular verbs should be familiar to you. There are three main types, classified according to the ending of the infinitive: -are, -ere, -ire. The -ire group subdivides in the present tense. In the Grammar reference, in addition to a table showing the three types of verb, there is a list of common -ire verbs of each subgroup.
- ⢠Verbs are traditionally set out in tables vertically in columns. We usually learn a verb âgoing downâ, e.g.: parlo, parli, parla, parliamo, parlate, parlano. Some people find it more useful to consider them âgoing acrossâ, e.g.: parlo, scrivo, dormo, finisco. This highlights the similarities and differences between the various types of regular verb.
- ⢠Working across, you can see that there is no difference between the endings of some persons of the verb from one type to another:
1st person singular: | always ends in -o |
2nd person singular: | always ends in -i |
1st person plural: | always ends in -iamo |
- You may find it helpful to highlight the differences between the verb types and concentrate on them.
- An important point: the verb ending carries information about the subject of the verb; in other words, it does what the words I, you, we, etc. do in English.
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