ITALIAN FLUENCY is a unique vocabulary companion written in a contemporary, easy-reading style with an emphasis on humor. This is not your boring grammar book... Whether beginner or advanced, this book is your shortcut to the language and will improve your Italian by a quantum leap. The first part of the book, Going for Fluency, provides an insight into the four modalities of language (reading, writing, listening and speaking) and offers a broad range of ideas for increasing fluency through today's technology: websites, blogs, media, music and more. The second part, Cognates, the Twin Words of Language, explores thousands of twin words, (such as "interessante" and "interesting") that exist between Italian and English. Linguistically, these words are your ultimate cheap trick to language acquisition and are your springboard to fluency. People who are "good with languages" take great advantage of the extraordinary abundance of twin words at their disposal. Twin words, by virtue of their similarity, make memorization a snap and make picking up the language exponentially easier. These twin words are presented in an engaging, readable way, first through grammar, (nouns, adjectives, verbs, etc.) and then categories (People, Food, Wine, Travel and Leisure, etc.) ITALIAN FLUENCY unlocks your language skills by showing you a multitude of words, "that you knew, but didn't know you knew." The third part, Essential Vocabulary, explores the 1000 most essential Italian vocabulary words critical for everyday, fluent speech, through a variety of inspirational quotes, pithy quips, laugh-out-loud zingers and vocabulary-rich sentences. The author has a Master's degree in Italian Literature from Catholic University and a Bachelor's Degree in Spanish Literature from George Washington University in Washington, D.C. She has taught Romance languages for 8 years, and has been privileged to live in Spain, Germany and three regions of Italy.