Italian Short Stories for Beginners: 20 Captivating Short Stories to Learn Italian & Grow Your Vocabulary the Fun Way! (Easy Italian Stories)

I LOVE this well-designed teaching tool with its engaging vignettes & useful vocabulary from everyday Italian life. Each story reinforces vocabulary and Italian cultural tidbits from previous stories, while adding new words and scenarios for you to savor and enjoy. Many word meanings are given with each story; but I, even as a beginner, could figure out many of the unlisted words too. That's how well these stories are crafted to aid learning! The author(s) chose each story's theme and vocabulary to boost, not to overwhelm, the beginning student of Italian. Now I seek an Audio version of this gem of a study-book to give me the correct pronunciations, as well as to practice listening to & repeating what the native Italian-speaker is reading to me. I highly recommend this Italian "reader"! You will learn useful and interesting things of Italian language and life in each chapter.

You definitely learn and progress in your Italian from these short stories, especially if you combine them with the audio version available. Beware though that this is definitely not beginner lever, rather intermediate. I'd say upper A2 or B1 even.

I picked up Italian during the pandemic. After three and a half months of intensive, daily self-study with grammar and exercise books, I was at a level where I was able to read this book fairly easily. This book has 20 stories, all three-pages long with pretty large text. The final story is only two pages long and seems almost like a draft that didn't quite make a deadline, but no matter. The story is followed by a paragraph synopsis with English translation below, and a glossary of words bold-printed in the story. Then there is a short multiple choice questionnaire with answer key. What is in the vocabulary section can sometimes seem arbitrary, the definitions sometimes poor, and there are a lot of editing mistakes in the book, and one of the answer keys is just flat off. But these didn't really detract from my experience, personally. I set a modest goal of one story a day, and was able to do that with ease. It was a huge boost of confidence, an incredible way to learn vocabulary and grammar by coming across the words in the wild, so to speak, rather than in exercise books and flash cards. The stories range from the imaginative (one is told from the point of view of discarded socks) to the mundane (eg a student looking for a flat), but each has enough to keep your interest for its brief duration. There is a second volume of this, and an Intermediate volume as well, for continued reading practice. While half way through the book, I was confident enough to start into some children's books (Il piccolo principe, Roald Dahl), fairy tales (Calvino), and Italian comics. But I have purchased the other books and am interested enough to go through them. Highly recommended!

Definitely helpful and the rest is up to me to be more diligent in my learning.

New book contains a number of interesting short stories. Each story is followed with a vocabulary list which is very helpful. As a former student of Italian, but not having used it in many many years, there is a bit of a challenge to read the stories without help. I recommend having Google translate nearby.

This book serves as an excellent source of comprehensible input for advanced beginners or intermediate learners of Italian. The summaries, key vocabulary and comprehension questions for each story give readers the support needed for reading and working to understand the story, learning new words in context without providing all the answers. This enables true growth in learning naturally. The stories are varied, fun, and interesting and use several genres so that there is sure to be something engaging for any reader. The length is just long enough to be challenging but not so long as to be overwhelming. I highly recommend this book as a helpful resource for those who are serious about learning Italian and enjoying the process along the way; I truly believe that if you enjoy it, you’ll learn more effectively.

I was very happy to get hold of this book. Although I am not a beginner in Italian, I found it very fun and useful to read. It is a fantastic way to learn and practice Italian. You need to have some basic knowledge in Italian to be able to read the stories in this book because it is not really an ABC of the language. What a great idea to provide at the end of each story a summary of it in English! This helps the English-speaking readers check their reading comprehension in Italian. Even more useful is the vocabulary included for each story - a great way to learn new words and be reminded of those you already know but may have forgotten with time. I recommend this book to everyone and anyone who is learning Italian or knows it but wants to refresh vocabulary knowledge and reading comprehension. Five Stars!

I have to echo the same sentiments as many of the other reviewers. This is more for intermediate learners. I have been studying Italian for 6 months. While the concept of this book is good, I'm finding myself having to look up and write down the meanings of many of the words, including the words that are written at the end of the story. Speaking of the meanings at the end of the story, they are not listed in alphabetical order, which makes them much harder to find.

イタリア語検定4級の私には、なんとか内容が把握できる程度の文章です。 音声データがないのが非常に残念。

I really recommend this book for the Italian beginners, it has a good method teaching it.

I enjoy reading this book

I read this book within one week. I am an absolutely beginner and I enjoyed reading the stories because they are funny and the characters are very nice. I strongly recommend this book if you want to practice your reading in Italian.

I’ve been dabbling with learning Italian using phone apps and a book for a while. Not getting far. Realising I need to widen my reading and listening materials I decided to get a couple of easy reading stories in Italian aimed at learners. This is not too difficult to read and follow the gist of the stories - a couple seem trickier than others. I will say it is worth just reading through each story without stopping. Then again in closer detail trying to comprehend each sentence. Then if you want (as I do) I like to dive deeper into the grammar and look up things I don’t understand and new words. The stories are (those I’ve read) it appears more aimed at senior school children to read but the language is properly challenging and the stories are actually quite fun! There is a decent words glossary for each story and a summary in Italian with an English translation plus a quick quiz for each story to check you did understand what it was all about! My Italian is several years in of light study. And I’m just about ok with this book. Alongside other learning resources it’s helping to slot together difference elements of language comprehension for me. Clearly my understanding of Italian is better than I realised in some cases because I’ve spotted a couple of errors in the text and glossary words incorrectly translated (or incorrect translation in relation to the story they are featured in) but these errors seem few and don’t detract from the usefulness. In fact if anything the few errors helped me as I’ve looked up words and phrases carefully to be sure I’m not mistaken. Would I recommend this to learners of Italian? If you’re heading down a slightly more rounded ‘academic’ approach as I’ve decided to take in addition to the day to day conversation study, then yes, it’s good to have well written text to use as part of your learning and this book of short stories is worth it.