Short Stories in Italian for Beginners

By: Olly Richards

Narrated by: Matteo Ghilardi

An unmissable collection of eight unconventional and captivating short stories for young and adult learners.

Short Stories in Italian for Beginners has been written especially for students from beginner to intermediate level, designed to give a sense of achievement, and most importantly - enjoyment! Mapped to A2-B1 on the Common European Framework of Reference, these eight captivating stories will both entertain you, and give you a feeling of progress when listening.

What does this book give you?

• Eight stories in a variety of exciting genres, from science fiction and crime to history and thriller - making learning fun, while you gain a wide range of new vocabulary
• Controlled language at your level, including the 1000 most frequent words, to help you progress confidently
• Authentic spoken dialogues, to help you learn conversational expressions and improve your speaking ability
• Pleasure! It's much easier to learn a new language when you're having fun, and research shows that if you're enjoying listening in a foreign language, you won't experience the usual feelings of frustration - 'It's too hard!' 'I don't understand!'
• Accessible grammar so you learn new structures naturally, in a stress-free way

Carefully curated to make learning a new language easy, these stories will entertain you, while at the same time allowing you to benefit from an improved range of vocabulary and a better grasp of the language, without ever feeling overwhelmed or frustrated. From science fiction to fantasy, to crime and thrillers, Short Stories in Italian for Beginners will make learning Italian easy and enjoyable.

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

Download the accompanying reference guide.©2018 Olly Richards (P)2018 Hodder & Stoughton Limited

Critic reviews

"Olly's top-notch language-learning insights are right in line with the best of what we know from neuroscience and cognitive psychology about how to learn effectively. I love his work - and you will too!" (Barbara Oakley, PhD, author of New York Times best seller A Mind for Numbers)

Easy to follow. Good amount of repetition. Clearly enunciated

I would have appreciated the whole text in the pdf but the vocab was helpful and the comprehension activities were good. It really helped me put together everything I have learned so far

A few chapters missing but still great

I like these simple, short yet imaginative stories that are at a novice level to read and understand the narration. Unfortunately, I have come to at least 2 missing chapters.

Great. Interesting plots. Words used with a plan.

New words are used not once, bit few times so you may better understand them and better remember them. I listened about 10 times alread, and bought another 5 titles of this author. Very very recomended.

Narator is perfect.

Loved it!

The stories are fun with a good variety of themes like pirates and time travel, old kingdoms, spaceships, etc. Each one is divided into 3 chapters. Each chapter is around 10 minutes long.
The narrator's pace is good, not too fast.
The PDF includes a summary of the story, vocabulary and a short test (choose the best answer).
For some reason there's a transcript of only one of the stories, I wish all of them had it, but since the narration is not too fast and understandable, it doesn't matter much.
Would definitely recommend.

A great addition to your language-learning arsenal

Initially, I was a little skeptical about this series of Olly Richards. Nevertheless, listening to his "Short Stories in Italian" was definitely a good investment of my resources. The audio book has a number of short stories and is accompanied by a PDF. The PDF has a summary for each chapter of each of the stories, as well as a short list of new words and their English equivalents. Furthermore, a number of MCQs (as well as their answers) to test the reader's comprehension of the stories is also supplied. Every now and then, a full chapter of a story is provided in text. This is nice, though it would have been much more helpful to simply provide the full text with the audio book, especially that the book is primarily aimed for language-learners.

Olly Richards doesn’t miss

Great as always. I love the stories, they’re easy to follow and I love the vocabulary and review at the end of every chapter. This is the best way to learn a language. Thank you Olly.

No boring stories! Some are truly engaging.

Unlike some Italian study materials, this one has very view technical errors, but a couple grammar points that glaringly misdirect you if lacking a good understanding of direct and indirect object pronouns, and the tolerance some Italians accept that are unacceptable uses in written Italian that may be employed in spoken Italian. One example is the use in this book (now the comparison requires consulting the written script while listening to the Audible format) of the indirect object pronoun "gli" (to him) to instead mean "to them". Thus, "Gli parliamo," when accepting inelegant (wrong grammar) in spoken Italian as is in this text is reproduced in written form, can be translated as, "We speak to him," or "We speak to them." Also, the written text NEVER at any time uses the ALWAYS required FORMAL spelling of the third person singular direct object "La," meaning "you" but uses "la," meaning "her" or a feminine "it". Thus, where "Se la vedo," and "Se La vedo," sound the same when spoken, they mean two entirely different things, "I see her," and, "I see you," respectively. There were a few instances where ambiguity arose in the text as a result of that error. AS TO TECHNICAL ERRORS: These are extremely few. They consist of written text that is in the paper book (presumably the PDF follows the written book, but I didn't check), that the Audible version's voice actor omits speak.

incomplete

accompanied pdf missing most of first chapter.
I would think they would have corrected it during proofing. I would have given a much better review but not alot can be done with a problem like this.

MOST TEXT MISSING

This might be a good tool for learning Italian if the PDF did not have most stories missing. The first full page is no. 6, then 7, then 13, etc. The transcript starts with annexes while the actual stories are misplaced.