Buondì.

Everyone knows that handwriting is an obsolete skill.

Mine has always beeen terrible, but these days I only ever pick up a pen when I need to write something on the shopping list stuck to a fridge with a magnet:

“beer”

Young people still seem to communicate in text, and extremely rapidly, using only two thumbs and a predictive algorithm.

(I turn those off – I HATE that Google or whoever knows what I’m going to write before I do!)

Good luck to them, I say.

And to hell with elementary school teachers everywhere who insist that learning how to write with a pen will be worth the effort and somehow make you a more valuable member of society.

Correct spelling is another thing that, as a child, I found not to be worth the effort.

And yay! I am finally vindicated – now we have spellcheckers on every possible device.

But… reading?

Surely that’s not becoming redundant, too?

After all, what’s the point of being able to move your thumbs in a blur on a crowded bus or subway train if no one is interested in reading what you hope to communicate?

Call me grouchy (surprisingly, people do) but it gets on my tits when people phone or write to ask something that’s easy to find with a simple Google search, or that’s clearly referenced on a website:

What does CEFR mean?

What counts as ‘full time’ language study?

How much do courses at your school cost?

It’s not that I mind answering questions like that, or not in particular, anyway.

If typing the four letters C, E, F, and R into your favorite search engine is beyond you (perhaps you have no thumbs?), I will happily explain that they refer to the Common European Framework for understanding the idea of levels in language learning, and that the CEFR provides very useful checklists with which you can self-evaluate your level in Italian, or other languages, in various skill areas.

My worry, anzi FRUSTRATION, is that there’s no point in providing basic information about what are in fact fairly complex issues to someone who is unwilling to READ.

Knowing what CEFR stands for is of little use unless you can actually be bothered to read the checklists and use this textual material to enhance your understanding of your current or future progress in language-learning.

The ‘what’s full time when it comes to learning Italian?’ question invites different answers depending on why one is asking, and that I cannot, a priori, know.

Are we talking for the purposes of applying for a study visa?

Or for obtaining college credits?

Or with regard to the way language courses are usually organised in universities, or in the private sector?

Or as regards how fast you can expect to reach level X? (It might depend on what exactly you spend your hours of study doing…)

Insomma, why you want to know matters.

“How much is the course?” drives me into a frenzy, I admit.

“Which course?”

“I don’t know. What are the options?”

“They’re on the website, and are all explained in detail there.”

“I didn’t look. Can you tell me?”

“Well, you can choose between standard, intensive, evening or individual options, depending on your needs.”

“How much do they cost?”

“That depends on how long you decide to study for.”

and so on, and so forth.

To be fair, many people do manage to read the website(s) and find out what they need to know.

Often people will write or phone just to check that there are real people behind the site, and to get a feel for how things are run.

For those, there is hope.

Learning a foreign language is a slow, complex and potentially costly process.

Getting the best results from the time (and sometimes money) that you invest will depend on you being willing to learn ABOUT the process, and optimise the way you approach it.

Yes, there are apps that will do some, or all, of the work for you – no need to read a single explanation, the GUI (look it up) makes that unnecessary.

For a while.

But the apps will only take you so far.

Sooner or later you will need to start making decisions for yourself.

And people, making good decisions means being informed!

And while asking a question is one way of finding out what you need to do, if you only do that, you are VULNERABLE!

“How much is the course?”

“It’s €200.” (There’s the option to save 15% if you read the website but I’m feeling grouchy so won’t tell you this on the phone.)

I have two teenagers at home these days (it used to be three, but one’s now in her twenties).

One of the things a parent notices at different ages is how kids, in gradually gaining autonomy, learn to check things out for themselves.

It’s satisfying to see that someone who was once dependent has become INdependent.

Functioning members of society know that avoiding mess-ups means putting in some time checking how things work BEFORE begining a new project.

You’d do it before renting an apartment or a car, presumably. So why not before planning a course of studies?

The answers you need are out there, if you look for them.

Here are a few places to begin:

OnlineItalianClub.com

• How to learn Italian (or any language)
• Italian Levels: What’s my level in Italian?
• “Best of” OnlineItalianClub.com
• FAQ

Our school in Bologna

• Best Articles About Learning Italian
• Prices
• FAQ

P.S.

I’ve lost count of the number of people who’ve replied “I never read news” to my suggestion that they use EasyItalianNews.com to boost their comprehension skills (reading and listening), learn new vocabulary, and consolidate the grammar they’ve been studying.

Only between a quarter and a third of club members have subscribed to get this FREE material emailed to them three times a week.

You know what I READ on a marketing website some place once?

That someone has to be exposed to your marketing message ON AVERAGE 13 TIMES before responding.

It’s true, I swear!

(Which is why I often finish articles with a P.S., like this one.)

But…

And it’s a big ‘but’…

There are people who are paying attention and respond the FIRST TIME, or the second, or the third.

They see the ‘free’, they take a look, they realize the extraordinary value they are being offered, and they sign up.

Wanna be a successful language learner?

Read more.

Listen more.

Handwriting skills and spelling are optional.

Buondì.

I get a lot of silly questions: via email, on the phone, and from students (and staff) at the school.

But this one I made up, to illustrate today’s point:

“How long will it take until I can understand everything I hear?”

Actually, it’s not such a daft thing to ask, assuming that:

1.) you have absolutely ZERO experience of learning a foreign language, or

2.) you have no ability to reflect on how long it has taken you to reach your current ‘level’ in understanding your mother tongue.

I certainly remember, back in the day, wondering why learning a foreign language was so DIFFICULT.

Why did nothing I do seem to make any difference?

How come OTHER PEOPLE managed to understand everything and to speak effortlessly??

But if you’ve already successfully ‘learnt’ a language, then you’ll know that learning another is possible.

You’ll have some idea how to go about it and, more or less, how long it will take until the progress is noticable.

I also recall, as a child, that my parents used to listen to a certain serious radio programme on the BBC each morning during breakfast.

It featured news, discussion of the day’s events and themes, a weather forecast, and so on. The target audience would have been informed, interested adults.

So not me, an uninformed and only marginally-interested child, later teenager.

In fact I wouldn’t start consuming this type of media content until I was a young adult in my early-twenties, around the time I got a job in an office and started buying a daily newspaper to read on the commute and during the boring lunch hour.

Insomma, up until then I’d been in my own bubble of youth. What I heard on the radio over breakfast was basically just noise for adults, devoid of any meaningful context.

Only when I decided to participate did what was being talked about begin to become meaningful.

Suppose you decide to take up a new pastime, let’s say knitting.

It’s a skill with which I am only peripherally familiar, as my wife’s a passionate knitter.

But what the hell! If she can do it, so can I.

So I grab a pattern and a ball of wool that I am assured will be suitable, pick up the right-sized needles, and do my best to follow the instructions.

Boh! This is not making any sense.

I Google the unfamiliar terms but the explanations, while written in plain English, don’t help me know how to proceed.

I give up trying to figure it out on my own and ask Stefi, who’s delighted that I’m showing an interest.

She explains cheerfully (and rapidly) what I should actually be doing.

I listen as best as I can, but I’m baffled.

So explanations completed, I set down my needles and head for the kitchen in search of a cold beer.

While rummaging through the refrigerator, I reflect that perhaps, in order to understand this strange new language of knitting, I will need to develop a certain corpus of EXPERIENCE.

Only then will the terms and instructions become meaniningful.

But back to language-learning (besides being an ace knitter, my wife’s also an accomplished linguist, way more so than I am…)

This morning, as I washed the plates from last night’s meal, prepared sandwiches for the kids’ lunch and took tonight’s dinner out of the Instant Pot (if you have one too, do send recipes!), as is now my habit, I listened to ‘P1-morgon’ on Sveriges Radio P1.

That’s more or less the equivalent of what my parents used to bore me with forty years ago: news and features, a few minutes each of business and science stories, highlights from the world of culture, and so on.

And as I listened, I reflected on how much of what I heard I was understanding, or failing to, and how, and why.

The format of the broadcast is ormai (by now) very familiar, which helps me follow the transitions from story to story and know who’s speaking, and about what.

How much I get of the actual content depends a lot on what’s being said.

But the more I listen, the more familiar it all becomes: who’ll be the presenter on the Chistmas TV show, which soccer star won the ‘Golden Ball’ for being the year’s top player, the government’s plan for tackling the shootings and explosions in Malmö, traffic accidents due to ice, and on and on until I turn the radio off to begin writing this.

There’s just so much to know, not just about the language, though that too, but also about the users of the language, where they are, what concerns them, what they use the language FOR.

For instance, I can now recognise when someone’s speaking Swedish with an Arabic accent (it’s not hard) and notice that the content of what’s being said is coherent (it’s possible to be a muslim and an anti-racist, the girl was explaining.)

Of course, it’s likely that unless we choose to specialise in a particular topic (gang crime in southern Sweden, knitting), we’ll never know everything there is to know about it.

But certain aspects of the language (the most frequently-used grammatical, phonological and lexical elements) become more and more familiar with exposure and practice.

Which gives our brains an ever-greater chance of piecing together the phonemes entering our ears into something we will find meaningful.

It’s not that you study the grammar, memorise the word lists, then turn on the radio or TV and understand everything.

Nor that you immerse yourself in the media or society using the language you want to learn and so pick up the language rapidly and effortlessly.

If I could pour Italian into your brain, download the language in an instant though a USB port in your skull, so you had it all there, ready to go, as soon as you opened your mouth or someone spoke to you?

You’d save a lot of money on Italian courses, of course.

But it wouldn’t change the fact that you were a foreigner who doesn’t know who’s who in Italian politics, or why it matters.

You might still drink cappuccino in the afternoons.

“How long will it take until I can understand everything I hear?”

You’ll never understand everything you hear.

You don’t in your own language, though on a day-to-day basis that doesn’t present a problem.

Give it a couple of months of full-time study (a couple of years, part-time) and you’ll begin to be able to get by.

To be proficient, six months to a year of full-time study should do it, depending on which language we’re talking about.

Five or six years of part-time courses and/or self-study will have a similar effect.

But proficent doesn’t mean ‘everything’.

There’ll always be stuff you hear on the radio that makes you go “Boh?”

But at some point?

You’ll be OK with that.