Buondì.

Over dinner yesterday evening, my son (you know, the one who reads the EasyItalianNews.com broadcasts) was telling us that today he has a test at school, but expects to do badly.

It’s some sort of online multiple-choice test, apparently, at which you only get a few seconds to answer each question, and (this part is uniquely Italian, I think), if you answer wrongly you get a negative point.

This time last year the class had done a similar test, with the same teacher, and it had been a disaster. Everyone had failed, and the teacher had been ‘incavolata’, blaming the kids for not having studied.

This reminded me of the first time I administered an ‘end of course’ test, I told him. Way, way back at the beginning of time, when I was first starting out as a language teacher. ALL my students did terribly!

That came as rather a shock when, first thing on a Saturday morning, full of enthusiasm, I sat down to mark their test papers.

In a panic, clutching a sheaf of test papers that I’d covered in red crosses, I rushed to the school to phone my boss (younger readers may not know that in the past there were no smartphones or mobile networks…), who kindly invited me around to his place so he could take a look.

In his dressing gown, he glanced through the papers and confirmed that virtually the whole of my class would have to repeat their month-long course.

“Didn’t you prepare them for the test?” he enquired, though it must have been obvious that I hadn’t. I’d worked hard for a month planning and delivering lessons, to the best of my ability and according to what was on the syllabus, but it hadn’t even occurred to me that I should (cheat?) and look through the test my students would be expected to pass during their final lesson with me.

Back at yesterday’s dinner table, my wife (also a language teacher by training) and I concurred: if everyone does badly on the test, it’s likely to be a problem with the test, not with the class. Cioè kiddie, it’s the teacher’s fault. She should have known better. So if it’s another disaster tomorrow, don’t feel too bad about it. You’re in the hands of an incompetent.

Vediamo.

I tried to think of other learning situations, with which to illustrate my point to the lad, though he’d lost interest by that point. Learning to drive, for example!

Obviously, there’s some individual variation in the quality of the learner-drivers, in their driving instructors, and probably in examiners, too. But the system broadly works – most people pass, sooner or later, and the ones that don’t, probably shouldn’t be behind the wheel in any case.

See? Not everything about the world is as screwed up as at your school!

Which, in turn, has made me think about learning. Learning to drive, taking the theory test, passing the practical, are ideas that I guess most people are familiar with, so not a bad place to start.

There’s a defined goal – getting your license/permit.

(Have you defined a goal for your Italian?)

There’s a defined set of knowledge and skills – the Highway Code, reversing into a parking place, and so on.

(What are the most ‘necessary and immediate’ things you need to learn to achieve your Italian goal? Says who?)

There’s a feedback system, so you’ll know how you’re doing – your instructor at first, then the theory test, then the practical examiner.

(How will you know you’re learning? How will you measure how much? How will you realise when you’ve achieved your goal?)

You get the idea, I’m sure.

But learning a language is a much BIGGER, much LONGER, and much less WELL-DEFINED task than learning to drive a car.

You might, for example, consider that ‘knowing Italian’ would include being able to understand most of what you hear (allow months, or years), being able to express your thoughts with only a minimum of hesitation (ditto), or being able to pronounce the language in a way that doesn’t make you a laughing stock (good luck with that.)

I’m sure I could list dozens more elements that could quite reasonably be included in the umbrella goal of ‘knowing Italian’, and so feature in your studies. We could add ‘an extensive vocabulary’ – but to what point? Or how about ‘confident and accurate use of grammar’ – but ALL of it, and to what ‘tolerance’?

And not to forget ‘having cultural knowledge of the Italian-speaking community’, which is a rabbit hole awaiting the unwary with time on their hands. You could spend lifetimes just on that one.

See? Learning Italian is not the same as learning to drive. My analogy is a limited one.

What about learning to play better chess (I’m not a beginner, just bad at it), which I mentioned on Wednesday?

Some elements are common to learning to drive, for example the presence of feedback systems and resources. My app shows me my ‘ranking’ (which seems to get worse and worse), and that of my opponents. Each game is won, lost or drawn, so that’s very immediate and useful feedback. And there’s a myriad of exercises and puzzles to try, which are organised by their nature and purpose (checkmate in two, checkmate in three, forcing stalemate, openings, etc.) Those are really helpful in understanding what I need to learn, and how I should go about it.

Yet some elements are common to learning Italian and NOT to learning to drive.

There’s no ‘end point’, for example. I have to set my own goal – how much ‘better’ do I want to be, and what does ‘better’ mean anyway? If the app’s algorithm will, by its very nature, attempt to match me with players of a similar standard, I’ll always have close to a fifty/fifty chance of losing no matter how much I learn, which, to all practical purposes, eliminates one of the feedback mechanisms. All that’s left is the ranking number, and who knows what that means or how it’s calculated?

It’s something to consider: whether you’re a beginner at Italian, or super-advanced, or massively-experienced but wildly-inaccurate as I am, THERE’S ALWAYS SOMEONE BETTER THAN YOU.

Which means that any coherent, sustainable learning-activity will depend on having appropriate goals.

Will I ever become a chess grandmaster? It’s highly unlikely (though I once had one on the back of my motorbike…) Does that mean I shouldn’t try to improve, then? Well, of course it doesn’t.

Will I ever perfect my Italian? That’s equally improbable, especially as I’m not even trying, preferring to spend my time on other languages which offer more scope for escape from the day-to-day frustrations of life in Italy.

Insomma, it’s about knowing what you want, but more importantly, why. I want to improve my Swedish, to show I can, to prove something to myself (Physician heal thyself!), to please my wife’s extended family, and to learn about the process of learning from the student’s point of view.

What did Tom’s teacher want, when she set her class an impossible test? To motivate them, maybe? If so, it probably didn’t have the desired effect. But hey, no one’s perfect.

Perhaps it was to set a benchmark, so as to be able to measure the progress achieved in a year! By comparing the results from 2020 against 2021’s similar test? I wouldn’t want to credit the lady with a vision and strategic ability that probably doesn’t feature in her professional toolkit, but it’s not impossible.

At the end of the day, though, she’s the one making the decisions, not the kids.

And if you ask me, lone voice in the wilderness, THAT means that if the outcome is not what is hoped for, it’s the responsibility of the person who selects the goals and feedback mechanisms.

Think about that.

A lunedì, allora.

Final reminder!

Here’s a final reminder about this week’s two ‘eBooks of the week’, Amarcord (Fellini’s film, retold for learners of Italian) and La coscienza di Zeno (the sort of literature teachers shouldn’t inflict on teenagers but which makes perfect lockdown reading for a man of fifty-three…)

They’re both half the usual ebook price, until Sunday night, when the offer ends.

On Monday I have something new for you!!

Watch this space.

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Buondì.

As if I didn’t have enough to do in 2021, what with learning Spanish, improving my French, and maintaining Swedish and Turkish, recently I’ve taken up chess.

I blame my eldest daughter, who’s locked down at university and, scrabbling around for ways to fill the time, downloaded the most popular chess app to her phone and challenged me to an online game.

Which I won, easily. Bright as she is, she’s just starting out, whereas I’ve been playing the game, very badly, for forty-five years.

The app, once I had it on my phone, proved to be rather addictive. If I say it’s the chess version of Duolingo, a lot of you will know what I mean.

After a week, my free trial lesson was due to convert into a fully-paid annual membership costing me over a hundred euros, yet the app was proving such a diversion, I let that happen without protest, and haven’t yet started kicking myself over my profligacy.

What’s this got to do with language learning?

The rules of chess are uncomplicated, as are the rules of language, once you’re broadly familiar with them.

Playing the game at a basic level is straightforward, and if you’re playing someone of a similar level, fun. Much like using your Italian to chat to another foreigner you might, in pre-Covid days, have met on a plane, or in a pub.

But playing BETTER, playing WELL, it very soon becomes apparent, is going to involve much learning, and likely over an extended period.

For while the rules of the game are simple, boy there’s a lot to know!

Opening moves, for example. White (that’s me) plays first. I have a choice of 10 possible opening moves (two knights, eight pawns). Black can respond in ten ways. Is that already a hundred possible combinations, and we’ve only had one turn each?

I need a shortcut, so look up ‘chess openings’, hoping to find a piece of advice that will help me win more often and more easily.

But of course, there are dozens, maybe hundreds of possibilities, and each one is a rabbit hole down which I could tumble, even the simplest, most obvious options. I do this, she does that. Or she does that. Or this. Now what do I do? And what will she do?

OK then, there are no rapid, easy ways to improve my chances of winning (other than always playing against my children, who don’t appear to have the ‘chess gene’ either). So what next?

Next I look more closely at the app, to see what’s available, to see what other people seem to find useful. How do other people, the community of players who know much more than I do, improve?

The paid version of the app has lessons, with video and practice exercises. In the first few days, I did all the beginner ones, and so finally learnt all the stuff that my dad neglected to teach me back in 1974 (so that he could keep winning?)

Then I started on tactics, and finally realised why I always, always got beaten as a teenage chess player – it appears my friends’ fathers were better at the game than my old man was (a lot of them worked at the university), and so knew about stuff like ‘forks’, ‘skewers’ and ‘forcing’ moves, which they passed on to their offspring.

No matter. I’m learning now, at least! And to supplement the lessons, I tried the puzzles.

What’s white to move to win the game? Of course, it’s not one, obvious, move. What you have to figure out is a sequence that will lead inevitably to victory, but which might involve decisions that, at first, seem counter-intuitive.

Sacrifice my QUEEN, my BEST PIECE, for a pawn? Why on earth would I do that? Ah, I see, so this happens, and then that will happen, and then I can do this, and then I win! Cool.

Besides the puzzles, and the lessons, there’s the app’s main attraction: actually playing! And not just against my smartphone, either. There are, apparently, millions of people out there who are anxious to trash me at any hour of the day or night. In just seconds the app will set up a game for me with some whizz-kid teenager in Pakistan, a sulky Russian genius, or a pensioner in Norway.

Inexperience is a huge disadvantage, in chess as in life. So, at first, I got trashed in every game, and not just trashed, but rapidly and embarassingly trashed.

Turns out I was using the app’s ‘default’ 10-minute game setting, in which each player gets only ten minutes IN TOTAL to play the entire game. He (it’s mostly a ‘he’) thinks and moves rapidly, while I ponder, trying not to make a beginners’ mistake. Nine minutes later he wins, not because I played particularly badly, but because my ten minutes were up and he still had six. Game over. I lost. Again.

The thirty-minute setting works better for me, though now I have to train myself to move LESS rapidly, to think things through more (the puzzles and the lessons help), to be less impetuous, to see deeper into the situation, and above all, to make fewer ‘blunders’.

Yesterday, I lost all seven games, and worse, ended up ‘ranking’ fifty points lower than I had at breakfast. At midnight, I went to bed, thoroughly depressed, then couldn’t sleep, so turned on the app again and stared at a puzzle.

When I finally drifted off, I dreamed of bishops, wooshing around the board on their powerful diagonals. How come my bishops don’t do that? It’s the opening, gotta be!

So, after a week of effort, what have I learned?

That’s there’s so much TO learn, that I could be doing this for the rest of my life yet still be terrible at the game, and that there are always going to be masses of people better than me, who I will lose to, no matter how much I improve.

Perhaps that’s the point: not to play perfectly, not from the outset, perhaps never, but to learn from mistakes and, above all, to enjoy the process.

There is no end point, no destination.

There’s only the journey.

(And today’s another day! Maybe I’ll get better results if I play in the mornings, when I’m fresher?)

A venerdì.

P.S.

Don’t forget this week’s two ‘eBooks of the week’, will you? They both ‘difficult’, which turns out to be this week’s theme.

Directed by the brilliant Federico Fellini, ‘Amarcord’ is a masterpiece of Italian movie history. The title means “I remember” in dialect. The movie is Fellini’s heartfelt homage to his hometown, Rimini. Through the eyes of Titta – the young protagonist – we meet some of Rimini’s characters and live through a typical year in the town’s life in the early 1930s.

FREE Sample Chapter (.pdf) | Buy the full version, just £3.99 this week!

+++

Italo Svevo’s self-published 1923 novel takes the form of memoirs written by his protagonist, Zeno, a sick young man who is undergoing the new therapy of psychoanalysis and writing down his thoughts – on the instructions of his doctor, who later betrays him – as part of that process.

Follow poor Zeno as he explores his addictive personality, acquires a wife and later a lover, grieves for his dead father, fails at business, and eventually, many years later comes to the realisation that…

FREE Sample Chapter (.pdf) | Buy the full version, just £3.99 this week!

And if these are too easy, or too hard?

Then go browse our Catalog page, where you’ll find over a hundred ebooks for learning Italian, listed by type and in level order.

P.P.S.

Tuesday’s FREE bulletin of ‘easy’ Italian news is here.

Someone commented, asking if we could slow it down a little, which of course we could. Though I’d be constantly nagging my son (who does the audios, and has a teenager’s tendency to get distracted) not to revert to his natural speed.

But here’s the thing: would the audio being slower, ultimately help you develop your listening skills, to the point at which you could listen to an Italian TV or radio news broadcast and at least manage to get the gist?

In all likelihood, it would not. Modern language-learning materials tend to feature ‘natural’ audio, meaning that what you practice hearing is normal-ish speed and not devoid of complexity (accent, idiom, colloquialism, etc.) The earlier you get used to the challenges of real-life language, the better, or so the theory goes.

They say there’s no such thing as a silly question. Let’s assume that’s true.

But of course, that presupposes that questioners are willing to learn from the answers they receive.

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