The introductory Italian program that you have been waiting for is here! With innovative technology and a fully integrated, contemporary video program that will capture your students' interest, Sentieri is the future of Italian instruction.

We are pleased to present a sneak preview of the Sentieri Fotoromanzo to you. Please click on the images below to watch the video.

Lesson 3a   Download Lesson 3a	Lesson 5b
Lesson 8b	Lesson 9a

Students relate more with Fotoromanzo—what students are saying:

• "The Fotoromanzo is great! It is so helpful and interesting, it actually talks about the stuff I want to learn in Italian! "
• "Fotoromanzo brings studying Italian to life! Hearing and seeing our vocabulary used in real life situations is invaluable."
• "The Fotoromanzo is a great way to visually learn cultural aspects of Italy. Honestly, I skipped ahead to see who ends up together."
• "The Fotoromanzo is a nice supplement to the Italian course. It’s always nice to have some entertainment interjected into the class. Fotoromanzo succeeds in being entertaining and educational."
• "Love the juicy storyline! Very helpful and still entertaining to watch. P.S. Paolo is my favorite!!"
• "I really like how recent this is. In other textbooks the characters are more dated and that makes them harder to relate to. I also enjoy the characters’ qualities, the drama and romance."
• "Paolo, Viola, Lorenzo, and Emily were so much fun to watch and very relatable. It was great to see scenes of everyday Italian being used.”
• "Fotoromanzo is helpful when learning new vocabulary. It is helpful and interesting to hear what we are learning in context. The storyline is made to be relatable, and is a different way of learning the language."

The video

Shot in and around Rome, the Fotoromanzo follows the lives of four students who have come to Rome to study. Our characters live in a pensione in the Vaticano neighborhood and are truly a part of city life. As they visit the neighborhood pasticceria and various cafes and shops, viewers will see Romans and tourists alike enjoying life in the city.

 A number of scenes take place at famous Roman landmarks:

The textbook

In each lesson’s Fotoromanzo section, video stills from the video episode are accompanied by abbreviated versions of the video dialog. Both the video dialog and its abbreviated textbook version represent comprehensible input at the discourse level. Conversations were purposely written to recycle known language, incorporate lesson vocabulary, preview grammar points from later in the lesson, and — in keeping with Krashen’s concept of “i + 1” — contain a small amount of unknown language.

The Fotoromanzo can be used in different ways to suit a variety of instructional settings.

• Use the textbook as an advance organizer before showing the video episode.
• Show the video episode first and follow up with Fotoromanzo.
• Use the textbook as a stand-alone, video-independent section.

No matter how you decide to use the Fotoromanzo, your students will be engaged with youthful native speakers who bring Italian to life!