No time to read this? Why not find something to study instead? A1 – Beginner/Elementary | A2 – Pre-Intermediate | B1 – Intermediate | B2 – Upper-Intermediate | C1 – Advanced | C2 – Proficiency | What’s my level? | Italian level test

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Buondì.

As explained in the previous article (Bye-bye Bug), since Friday last I’ve had much more time ‘to study’.

Much, much more time.

The weekend – without walks, parks, or food tantrums – felt endless, and not in a fun way. I was even looking forward to Monday, and envying my wife, who would have to take the bus to work then sit at a desk most of the day.

Friday or Saturday evening we walked to a local restaurant and consoled ourselves with a ‘primo’ followed by a ‘fritto misto di pesce’, those helped down with several jugs of sparkling white wine. And then we were bored again, so went to bed early.

Looking to pass some idle hours, I browsed the podcasts on https://www.raiplaysound.it/. As it’s been years since I listened to Italian radio – except in the car – I had high hopes, but the podcast I listened on the US midterms was disappointing – rather like listening to a monologue from a school teacher. I much prefer the Swedish version ( https://www.sverigesradio.se/poddar/usapodden ), though of course I understand less of it.

Still browsing the neglected media apps on my phone, I read an article in Spanish about post-mastectomy breast reconstruction – don’t ask me why – then watched videos of French rioters burning down their ‘mairies’ (= town halls).

Later I opened the library app and flicked through ‘Le Figaro’. I won’t link to their site as there’s a paywall. And if you don’t live in the ‘Provincia di Bologna’, with it’s generously-funded public library service, your only option would be to pay for the content. The library uses https://www.pressreader.com/, which isn’t bad if you’ve the budget for it.

So the days passed until – I say – it’s Wednesday again! The house is tidy, at least, and I’ve got lots of work stuff done.

But there’s definitely a time lag involved here, between the moment when Stefi and I ‘got our lives back’, so to speak, and the point at which our days will feel well-lived again.

We’ll get there, I’m sure, just like you do after the end of a teenage romance. It’s all passion until – Boom! – everything’s different. Eventually you adjust.

Talking of time lags brings my mind back to language-learning causes and effects.

Suppose you want to ‘learn Italian’, or improve the Italian you already know, or whatever more specific goal you may have (specific is GOOD).

If you do nothing, then naturally nothing that you desire will happen. No progress will be made. You probably won’t be surprised.

But if you get your act together and do something – read an article, listen to a podcast, whatever floats your language-learning boat – then it can also feel, rather depressingly, as if nothing has happened, no progress has been made.

Be aware.

Don’t be suprised if it feels like you got nothing back from the Spanish article on cosmetic surgery or the French ‘how to riot’ news clips. That’s totally normal.

Take a beginners’ Italian course and – for a short while – you’ll still be a beginner, even though each hour that passes adds much to your store of knowledge and experiences.

Then suddenly you’re not a beginner any longer. Boom!

You’ll know it’s happened when ‘conjugate’ no longer reminds you of ‘conjugal’ but instead describes the necessary work of finding the right bit of the verb you want to say or write.

Less-gramatically, you’ll know you’re no longer a beginner when simple interactions no longer seem like miracles, when you can ask for things in bars without resort to English, and so on.

Time lags, then flies. Happens all the time.

(“Time flies like an arrow. Fruit flies like a banana.”)

How to stick at it (the reading, the listening, the interacting, even the grammar study – if you absolutely must) long enough to see the desired effect?

What works for me is to focus on the process, by which I mean on the ‘doing something’, then on the ‘doing that something again’.

‘Fake it until you make it’, as they say. Except it isn’t faking it, you just haven’t made it yet. Or, at least, there’s no evidence of that having happened.

Objective: ‘read more in Spanish’ (rather than ‘learn Spanish’ or ‘improve my Spanish’, which are anything but specific).

Method: take a break from the computer at the time when – until very recently – my work day used to end so I could go collect Bug from the petting zoo. Walk to the piazza at the end of the street. Sit on the wall. Fire up the RTVE Noticias app or download EL PAÍS (el periódico global) from the library. Pick an article. Read it (while keeping an eye out for any of Bug’s little friends and their keepers passing by…) Repeat tomorrow.

Remember, if you do nothing, nothing will happen.

To which we can add, if you do boring stuff, nothing interesting will happen.

Boring is bad in language-learning, and probably life too. Choose something interesting (breasts, mid-terms, the French behaving badly) and there’s more chance of maintaining your ‘process’.

Which reminds me: below you’ll see the usual reminder to “read/listen to Tuesday’s bulletin of news from EasyItalianNews.com“, which is designed (was designed, actually, by me) to exploit precisely this ‘process + time = progress’ strategy.

You don’t have to ‘study’ it. You don’t have to look up all the words you don’t know in the dictionary. You totally, totally don’t have to ‘understand’ it, whatever that means.

All you have to do is to make it a regular thing, so read/listen to each bulletin (they’re free).

Do that for six months or so. If it doesn’t have any effect, email me to complain. No one ever does. But some people donate each month, so must – presumably – be happy.

We work hard to add three bulletins a week to your ‘read and listen to Italian’ process, and there’s no reason you can’t add other sources of audio and text to those.

All you have to do is go sit on a wall someplace and read/listen.

Time passes. Then suddenly…

Alla prossima settimana!

P.S.

And here’s a reminder to read/listen to Tuesday’s bulletin of news from EasyItalianNews.com.

Reading/listening practice will help you consolidate the Italian you’re studying, expand your vocabulary, and build vital comprehension skills.

EasyItalianNews.com is FREE to read/listen to.

Subscribing, and so receiving all three text + audio bulletins of ‘easy’ news via email each week – on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays – is also FREE.

Just enter your email address on this page and click the confirmation link that will be sent to you.

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OnlineItalianClub.com | EasyItalianNews.com | Shop (ebooks) | Shop (online lessons)

OnlineFrenchClub.com | OnlineSpanishClub.com | OnlineGermanClub.com

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No longer interested?

All bulk emails we send (including this one) contain an unsubscribe link, usually at the bottom. Scroll down to find it, click the link and select ‘unsubscribe’. That will permanently remove your email address from our mailing list.

No time to read this? Why not find something to study instead? A1 – Beginner/Elementary | A2 – Pre-Intermediate | B1 – Intermediate | B2 – Upper-Intermediate | C1 – Advanced | C2 – Proficiency | What’s my level? | Italian level test

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Buondì.

Fans of Bug, Roomie, and their nameless predecessor, that’s to say the various ‘rescue animals’ that we’ve hosted here at OIC HQ over the last five years, will – I’m certain – be pleased to hear that in a few days Bug will be off to his new ‘per sempre’ home.

Unbeknown to him, some of his toys were surreptitiously extracted from the various untidy piles in our living room and handed – in discreet plastic bags – to his new keepers, the idea being that he’ll have familiar things around him after the move.

This week he paid a first visit to his new digs, and was apparently amazed to find the exact same cuddly dinosaurs as the ones he has at home! He wasn’t easily dissuaded from bringing them back in the car so that Ozzy (strawberry-colored, larger, good for bedtimes) and Vulcano (blue, smaller, likes car rides) could meet their doppelgängers.

We had some explaining to do…

Così. From next week it’ll just be Stefi (editor of EasyItalianNews.com and main woman at our Italian school in Bologna) and myself. For the first time EVER, as our three adult kids finally left home, and are now living in London, Florence and Copenhagen (in descending order of age.)

Guess I’ll be able to get back to language-learning, at least. It’s been years since either one of us had any ‘spare time’ at all.

Talking of language-learning, as of course I should be, Dean emailed, wondering if club members would be interested to hear that ‘La Scala TV’ is freely available and has English and Italian subtitles.

That’s operas, ignoramus! Find details are on their website, for instance here: https://lascala.tv/it/faq

Which reminds me, back in the pandemic we did a series of ‘easy reader’ ebooks aimed at introducing club members to famous Italian operas, while at the same time providing Italian reading and listening practice. Cultured club members can browse them here: https://easyreaders.org/product-category/opera/

Back when we were publishing those, I watched/listened to each of the operas myself (more fun than it sounds) before promoting the ebooks. Roomie, our rescue ‘animal’ at the time, would wander in and out of our kitchen (also my ‘office’), attracted by the orchestral music and continual shrieking. Roomie was released into the wild back in 2023, since when we’ve heard nothing.

Non-opera fans, by the way, might want to browse the ebook store’s catalog page, which features loads and loads of interesting, fun material for learners of Italian, at all CEFR levels.

I like the ‘history’ titles, and the ‘classic movies’, too. Even the ‘Italian literature’ easy readers were good. Also during the pandemic, we did ‘book clubs’ based on those (find them on the club’s literature page).

N.b. Once on the ebook store’s catalog page, be sure to check out the free samples. And, usually, the online audio (for the entire text, not just the sample) is free too. Find the links to those in the free sample chapters. Just click and listen.

Gotta go now, to prepare sausage rolls and pizzette for Bug’s going away party at the petting zoo, which is this afternoon.

It’ll doubtless be too noisy for me to make out what anyone’s saying, especially with large animals rocketing carelessly between people’s legs and popcorn being spilt everywhere.

But perhaps there’ll be cute pups to cuddle. I need an Ozzy of my own right now.

Alla prossima settimana!

P.S.

And here’s Wednesday’s reminder to read/listen to Tuesday’s bulletin of news from EasyItalianNews.com.

Reading/listening practice will help you consolidate the Italian you’re studying, expand your vocabulary, and build vital comprehension skills.

EasyItalianNews.com is FREE to read/listen to.

Subscribing, and so receiving all three text + audio bulletins of ‘easy’ news via email each week – on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays – is also FREE.

Just enter your email address on this page and click the confirmation link that will be sent to you.

+++

OnlineItalianClub.com | EasyItalianNews.com | Shop (ebooks) | Shop (online lessons)

OnlineFrenchClub.com | OnlineSpanishClub.com | OnlineGermanClub.com

+++

No longer interested?

All bulk emails we send (including this one) contain an unsubscribe link, usually at the bottom. Scroll down to find it, click the link and select ‘unsubscribe’. That will permanently remove your email address from our mailing list.