Full description not available
P**S
An amateurish and embarrassing effort
The only thing this book has going for it is that is the only entrant in the genre for Italian. Otherwise, it is amateurish, sloppy, and chock-full of embarrassing errors. There is no author listed for this book, possibly because no one wanted to take credit for it, or possibly because this book indeed had no human author: it is credited instead to "MostUsedWords.com," and and to all appearances no one—at least no expert in Italian, linguistics, or copy editing—reviewed the text.In short, it is a great pity that Routledge has not included Italian in its excellent frequency dictionary series. In the meantime, only buy this one in cases of desperation.
R**R
If you are a strong B1 or a B2 learner and you want to up your game, this is what you need
I've now had this book for about six months and wanted to update my review. Everything that I have said below still stands. This book is not ideal and has some problems. The most notable of which being the example sentences. They are nearly worthless in some cases and need better curation on the part of the editors. Many times the primary meaning and the one given in the book, is not the meaning used in the example. For the price of the book, I expect higher quality examples and this is the only reason why I have given it 4 out of 5 stars. If it were possible, I would rather have given it 3.5 due to the price. As the books stands, I think $20 would be the right price for this book. The extra $10 only being justifiable if the examples were to be improved.While in my first review I have expressed skepticism about the frequency itself, I still believe that it's good enough for an advanced learner. We have different needs than someone working or studying in the field of corpus linguistics and what we have here is very helpful. I can think of at least 5 examples where I have learned a word form this list only to find it pop up in my reading or while watching Italian TV on RAI.Having passed my CILS C1 exam in June of 2018, this book is still part of my study routine as I try to add at least 5 words per week from the list on top of vocabulary and expressions that I pick up while reading and consuming other media. I am currently preparing for the C2 exam for December of 2019, and while I cannot say this book is a core component of my studies, it is a valuable one. Had I had this list back when I was at a B1/B2 level, it likely would have been a much more important part of my studies.Original review:I am currently in the final phases of studying for the CILS C1 exam and I purchased this just to see if it might act as a good vocab finisher for my preparation. It's a list of 2524 words. The first 2/3 of the book is the words presented in numeric order by frequency. This section contains the English translation and an example sentence in Italian with its English translation. Here is my breakdown.* It's based on a corpus very similar to that used in the site ReversoContext. The examples are even of a similar quality,* It contains words that are exact cognates in both spelling and meaning. These need to be removed in another edition of the book.* It's unlikely that the corpus is perfect for learners but it's certainly a great start and I wish I had this about six months ago.Comparing this to Using Italian Vocabulary and Using Italian Synonyms, I prefer this. and it costs about as much as one of those two books. I prefer reading widely and mining my own examples from what I read combined with using a Spaced Repetition System like Anki to doing exercises. Which brings me to the examples in this book. I would not rely solely on the examples in the book. Mine your own examples and look for definitions in Treccani or in another monolingual dictionary. There are errors and even though I have only had the book for a few hours, I have found at least one. Chimera, number 7943 by frequency, on page 41 is translated as "stasis" and the translation example simply uses the word chimera in English. Regardless, the Italian word chimera does not match the meaning stasis. So, not perfect but just about all we have got.
Trustpilot
2 weeks ago
1 month ago
