Ed Macierowski’s Crash Course in Italian to prepare for the Benedictine College Summer Program in Florence. (I started on oral Italian in January 2017 when the Dean informed me of the assignment, took the 6-week Italian course offered in Florence, and began reviewing the Pimsleur program on my return. As of mid-October 2017 I scored a “low intermediate” on a computerized diagnostic test. The items I used before going are marked with an asterisk; those that came to my attention later are not.) *https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Phonetic_Alphabet Monkey-say, monkey-do approaches to basic Italian conversation: Paul Pimsleur, Italian, Levels I-V, each with 30 half-hour lessons to be executed one lesson per day; the lessons are designed to provide memory cues to re-enforce key points just as memory decay normally sets in. (I was able to get through only about half of *Level III before going.) The audio programs by *Michel Thomas and *Berlitz are also useful. Italian Phonology *https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Italian_phonology *http://www.dizionario.rai.it/static.aspx?treeID=23&pg=3 Italian Vocabulary *Ignacio Baldelli & Alberto Mazzetti, Vocabulario minimo della lingua italiana per stranieri: 1741 parole con frasi ed esempi di uso frequente e con tradizione in inglese, francese, tedesco e spagnolo (Firenze 1981), with tables of essential preposition+article contractions and verbs. (Useful for making vocabulary flash cards; for highlighting terms in a bi-lingual dictionary: see below; for constant review of well-focused examples.) Helen Davies & Giovanna Iannaco, The Usborne Beginner’s Italian Dictionary (1991 ISBN 0-7460-0764-7), over 2000 items illustrated with color drawings and appendix with grammar hints. Giovanni Maria Dettori. 2,001 Most Useful Italian Words (Dover 2011 ISBN 978-0-486- 47625-4), with grammar primer in appendix. *D<oring><Kindersley> Italian English Bilingual Visual Dictionary (2015 ISBN 978-1- 4654-3632-0). About 6000 items; no grammatical information. *Gianpaolo Intronati, Italian Key Words (1992 ISBN9780906672259), groups some 2000 words in one hundred lessons of around 20 words each from a computer analysis of a million words, with the first 100 words accounting for 50% of normal conversational Italian, the first 500 for about 75%. Useful for prioritizing vocabulary flash cards with the Vocabulario minimo. J. L. Laide, Italian-English Frequency Dictionary: Essential Vocabulary, The 2500 Most Used Words & 421 Most Common Verbs. ISBN 978-1-53990918-7. (Careless proofreading and some erroneous translations; based on movie subtitles, includes vulgar and obscene items. Completed only in fall after return.) *Lonely Planet. Italian Phrasebook & Dictionary (6 th ed. 2015 ISBN 978-1-74321-441- 1). (Almost any phrasebook will help.) *Catherine E. Love, Webster’s New World Italian Dictionary: Italian/English; English/Italian, Concise Edition. Over 100,000 contemporary words and phrases (1985 ISBN 978-0-13-953639-7). Instructions in both languages in parallel columns.