Ciao! (with Audio CD) - Hardcover

Carla Larese Riga received her Master of Arts from Stanford University and has worked toward a PhD at the University of California, Berkley. She has over 30 years of experience as a dedicated professor of Italian at various institutions, including Santa Clara University, Stanford University, Foothill College, and De Anza College. She is a scholar of romance languages and is fluent in Italian, French, and Spanish.

Chiara Maria Dal Martello, a native of Vicenza, received her Laurea from the University of Urbino in English / Spanish and Italian Languages and Literatures, and she is currently a Ph.D. candidate in English Linguistics at Arizona State University. She has taught Italian Language and Culture at Big Bend Community College in Vicenza, Italy, and has been teaching at Arizona State University (ASU) since 1996 where she is now a Lecturer in Italian in the Department of Languages and Literature. While at ASU she has developed a new curriculum for the first- and second-year program, including online Italian courses, as well as two new upper-level courses, Italian for the Professions and History of the Italian Language. With her colleagues she is currently developing a new multimedia curriculum for the second-year Italian courses. She specializes in second-language acquisition, bilingualism and gender studies.

"I think the 6/e is an improvement on an already strong text. My students, with no prior knowledge of Italian, have been able to move quickly into spontaneous communication on the topics they become familiar with."

"Ciao! provides a balanced amount of cultural info, vocabulary and grammar exercises to help any teaching style."

"I enjoy this text. The improvements are good and it is modern and interactive, which is in my opinion the only way to effectively teach languages. My favorite part of Ciao! are the cultural pages and the dialogues, especially the funny ones that students can have fun with, which in turn motivates them."

"What I like best about Ciao! is the structure of the chapters, the fairly modern cut of the cultural sections. The exercises push the students to interactive dialogues."