italian books and coffe cup

Best Books to Learn Italian

We recommend this selection of books, perfect to learn the Italian language!

“Bar Italia”

This book offers articles on Italian society, life, culture, and habits, allowing students to get closer to the reality of Italian culture, and at the same time to further develop their knowledge of the language.

Each text presents a specific argument (e.g. an Italian Sunday, the dreams and nightmares of the Italians, Italians, and coffee…) The articles are taken from the daily press and are organized into units of progressive difficulty, suitable for students with Level A1 to C1.

Communicative and interactive activities are included, but also vocabulary exercises, morphology, and syntax, which can also be done without a teacher thanks to the solutions given.

“Una parola tira l’altra”

One word leads to another’ is a text addressed to absolute beginners and students with limited knowledge of the language.

The book provides the necessary vocabulary for everyday occurrences and the basic phraseology that one needs to communicate.

It is formed of 22 teaching units with varied thematic areas:

Encounters; in school; time passing; at the restaurant, the character; the emotions and sensations; the physical description; health; family; home; our everyday activities; idioms like “fare”; che tempo fa? (What’s the weather like?); expressing one’s taste; free time; communication; food and shopping; meals and cooking; clothes; sport; a little bit of geography; the city; holidays.

The book is filled with ironic and playful images that depict the vocabulary in a clear, easy-to-remember, way.

All of the following is contextualized in authentic situations of Italian life and its culture. This combined with the solutions at the end makes the textbook suitable or autodidacts.

“Una parola tira l’altra 2”

This is a book that allows foreign students to increase and deepen their vocabulary.

The text is divided into 18 teaching units:

What’s the weather like?; the environment; character and personality; emotions and feelings; our everyday activities; home; domestic appliances; work and professions; the office and the computer; the doctor’s; conversations on the phone; in the post office and at the bank; food and cooking; animals; sport; he city: holidays; clothing and fashion.

The textbook also offers newspaper articles and passages of literature, and as in the previous edition, the vocabulary is linked to images to help with memorization.

Each unit includes exercises and activities that involve different communication skills: oral and written assignments, role-plays, enigmatic games, and crosswords.

In this edition the answers are also given at the end of the book, allowing autodidacts to learn.

“Nuova grammatica pratica della lingua italiana”

Susanna Nocchi’s grammar is one of the most appreciated tools to exercise Italian grammar for foreign students with levels A1 to B2.

The grammar rules are presented clearly and concisely, but they are also thorough and effective. The cards are immediately understood.

There are also useful panels where one can find the most frequent and used forms of practical and authentic language.

For each grammatical unit, some exercises and tests allow the student to assess their knowledge and progress. The solutions are found at the end of the book.

“Grammatica avanzata della lingua italiana”

This book is addressed to students that already possess a good knowledge of the Italian language, and want to further develop their competence. It is, therefore, suitable for students with a medium to advanced level, from B1 to C1.

The text presents grammatical insights that, despite being widespread, rarely appear in Italian textbooks for foreigners.

The grammar points are clear and the exercises and activities are highly informative concerning Italian society and its culture. Moreover, in the previous volume, there are small text boxes with useful tips. The solutions are included, thus making this textbook equally relevant to students who want to deepen their linguistic knowledge as autodidacts.

“I verbi italiani”

This book is entirely dedicated to the Italian verbal tenses and modes; which many foreign students consider difficult. This text provides the students with useful strategies to address these difficulties.

The text is addressed to students from level A1 up to level C1. The units are organized in progressive difficulty, with tests so that the student may practice, and the solutions attached. The grammatical sheets present various verbal tenses, highlighting both their morphological aspect and analyzing the way they are used.

Starting from the regular and irregular forms of the present indicative to the use of the past tenses; from the advice concerning the correct use of the axillaries to the complicated issues regarding the correct use of the subjunctive; from the concordance of the modes and tenses to the particularities of the phrasal verbs.

“L’italiano per la cucina”

This is a must-have for all Italian language and food enthusiasts! Why? With “L’italiano per la cucina”  you learn new vocabulary, boost your understanding while reading, and learn to prepare delicious Italian dishes. What’s better than that?

Read 12 stories. Each of them describes a recipe and gives an insight into the Italian way of cooking. This book is great for students from levels A2 to B1.

“L’italiano con i fumetti”

Here we have a new way to enjoy reading in Italian and it’s great for Comic enthusiasts too: “L’italiano con i fumetti” is a  new type of Italian book that includes 5 volumes. Each volume is a different comic story: “Roma 2050 d.C.”, “Una storia italiana”, “Il mistero di Casanova”, “Rigoletto” and “Habemus Papam”. They include a lot of activities and exercises related to the stories.

The first 3 books are great for students from A1 to A2 level and the other two are perfect for intermediate learners.

“Le parole italiane”

This book presents a selection of exercises and games that help with memorization and the development of one’s vocabulary. It is divided into two sections: a lexical and a grammatical one.

The first one studies the words from a lexical point of view, proposing idioms and typically Italian expressions, whilst the second focuses on the grammar part. It deals with the study of less common themes, such as word formation, word order, derivation, alteration, irregular words, synonyms, antonyms, prefixes, suffixes, adverbs, and compound words. This text can be used either with or without a teacher; it is addressed to students from levels A1 to C1.

“Nuovo espresso”

The “Nuovo Espresso” is a collection of volumes of the Italian language for foreigners. It is divided into 6 levels foreseen by the Common European Framework for Languages from A1 to C2.

The texts include readings on texts concerning Italian culture, listening, grammar, exercises, keys for self-evaluation, games, and review tests.

For the first 3 volumes, there is also a video course (also available with subtitles and streaming on ALMA.it), which, like a series of episodes, tells the story of four friends, filmed during their everyday life, and a video on grammar that further develops the linguistic themes.

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