This book provides a unique method of learning and sharpening your Italian language skills. For the advanced beginner or intermediate-level learner, reading offers you the most convenient way to practice and sharpen your Italian and monitor your progress. Better Reading Italian brings you short passages that reflect real-life, contemporary issues and situations taken from magazines, the Internet, books, and newspapers. Covering such topics as cuisine, fashion and design, travel, the family, education, today's lifestyle, and Italian perceptions of America, each chapter features reading selections that become more challenging as the sections progress.You will find an article about designer Bruno Munari, a profile on Italian wines, a furniture maker's website, and more than fifty other selections to help you improve your reading speed and understanding. Following each article is a set of exercises that help your comprehension and develop invaluable reading skills including: skimming material for general meaning; scanning for details; using word formation, cognates, and context to determine meaning; understanding idioms and artistic expressions. An appendix provides suggestions for further reading. Better Reading Italian will not only help you improve or revive your language skills, it also will open up the enjoyable and exciting world of reading in Italian.