Janice M. Aski,
The Ohio State University Diane Musumeci,
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
ISBN: 007338626x Copyright year: 2014
Welcome to the third edition of Avanti! Beginning Italian. As the fastest growing Introductory Italian title, Avanti! continues to evolve to meet the changing needs of instructors and students. Professors are offering more hybrid and online courses, technology is providing functionality we could not envision just a few years ago, and the types of students we teach are ever-changing. Thus, in planning the revision, it was critical to retain the best parts of our program while responding to the changes around us.
The title Avanti! conveys the forward-thinking approach of this program, which is designed to guide experienced and inexperienced instructors in creating a truly communicative, interactive experience. In preparation for this edition, we employed a wide array of market research tools to identify a number of areas for digital innovation. Not surprisingly, communicative and cultural competence are at the top of the list of goals for the course, while key challenges included the administrative issues posed by fewer course hours and new course formats. As a direct result of our research, this new edition offers McGraw-Hill’s Connect™ and LearnSmart™ with their game-changing, adaptive and digital learning resources. These powerful, digital tools, now an integral part of the third edition, complement and support the goals of the Avanti program and address the needs of the evolving Introductory Italian course.