Italian for Reading (Ph.D. language exams)?

[madamoiselle]

Bonjour/Ciao ! 

I'm an incoming French Ph.D. candidate, and one of the stipulations of my Ph.D. is that I need to demonstrate a basic reading proficiency in two languages other than French. I have chosen German and Italian for a variety of reasons. I'm hoping to take my exams within the first two/three semesters, and have been told that I can either (1) take classes or (2) go the more common route, which is self-study through a guide book. I have a pretty rudimentary knowledge in both languages. I'm hoping to do the equivalent of a "double-minor" in my program, which will take up a ton of my allotted credit allowance, so I'm really not wanting to take a formal class.

While I'm having a fairly easy time finding German resources (there are a TON for reading comprehension), I'm having a rather difficult time finding them for Italian; does anybody have experience taking the Italian reading proficiency exam who can recommend a book/study plan? 

Grazie mille ! 

[palabra45]

Native Italian. My university offers language courses; I haven't taken any, but I know some teachers. I'll ask them if they can recommend specific books.

I'm just wondering, but for Romance languages I have the feeling that if you know your Latin, sometimes studying phonological changes is strikingly more helpful than memorising declensions (for basic linguistic competence, of course, we all know phonological changes are not perfect). This is especially true for Italian: since the language was not "spoken" until some 60 years ago, there are but a few changes from Latin to Italian (especially compared to French). I should have a list of the most common ones. In case you want the doc, pm me.

[madamoiselle]

@SkunkStyle77 thank you so much! Do keep me updated if they recommend anything.

In fact, I didn't mention it in my post, but I did study Latin and it is one of my reasons for picking Italian; I've been able to read some Italian before, and the stylistics are incredibly similar. It's very reassuring that you mention that!

[potsupotsu]

This is a very old thread, but The University of Wisconsin-Madison offers an online reading and translation course in Italian for the stated purpose of passing graduate language requirements.  https://continuingstudies.wisc.edu/classes/italian-reading-translation-online/ 

The textbook for the course is available for free online if you wanted to self study: https://courses.dcs.wisc.edu/wp/readingitalian/?_ga=2.145315127.2057915662.1548527592-499873767.1547504438