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Buondì.

I skipped last week’s Wednesday article, probably the first I’ve missed in more than ten years. Sorry!

But I had a series of excuses, which sort of piled up.

I’ve been ill for a couple of months now. I’ll spare you the details, but it’s rather wearing.

Poi, last week we were still in the middle of the summer’s third heatwave.

And finally, it was my son Tom’s college graduation (Tom is the voice of EasyItalianNews.com and has many fans).

From Bologna university, no less. In computer science, since you’re asking. Next stop Copenhagen, for post-graduate study, at which point we’ll need to find someone else to read the news.

His elder sisters went away for college: Sofia to Glasgow, Scotland (she’s now in London, busy becoming a Suits-style corporate lawyer), and Hannah to medical school in Firenze (Florence).

Hannah graduated earlier this year, and is now that absurdly-young, inexperienced doctor you get to see when your trusted middle-aged professional is off on holiday somewhere exotic.

Hannah’s another EasyItalianNews.com stalwart (picture editor, formatting) that we’ll need to replace when her career firms up a little.

So all three kids graduated, and on their way to earning a decent living, AI permitting.

When Tom leaves for Denmark in August it’ll just be me and Stefi (EasyItalianNews.com editor and kindly receptionist/manager person at our Italian school in Bologna).

Plus Bug, of course, though he’s more into playing with snails right now (it’s been raining, thank goodness). Besides being rather good at catching and tomenting creepy-crawly things (or perhaps because of that) his educational level is still at the ‘uno, due, quattro’ stage.

Sofia was born in ’99, so that’s twenty-seven years of non-stop child-derived, noise and expense.

Good job we still have Bug (for now) to ease us gradually into the sort of older adult lives that most people we know take for granted: eating out, relaxing holidays, driving something that isn’t covered in scratches and full of sweet wrappers and discarded toys.

Anyway, I’ve been busy (and still am, zoo-keeping Bug, cooking for Tom and Stefi), so skipped an article.

For a while now I’ve also been doing little to no language learning of my own. The library app on my phone (it’s called Press Reader – https://www.pressreader.com/ – and if you don’t have a generous public library system where you are, you can pay to subscribe) shows my ‘favorite’ newspapers in Italian, English, French, Spanish & Swedish.

Do I read them? These days, hardly ever. The local rag sometimes, The Economist each Saturday, but most of the app’s language-learning potential is wasted on me right now, at least until post-Bug.

The road to hell is paved with good intentions, my mother used to tell me. Though how she would know, being a good Christian lady, I have no idea.

And indeed, it’s all too easy to start language-learning at full throttle, only to run out of gas a couple of miles down the road.

As gyms supposedly rely on clients enticed by January promotions dropping out before spring comes, so do some language schools, language-learning apps, and so on. Pay a year’s subscription to save money! Repent at your leisure.

All that said, while my motivation is zero and my energy levels barely move the needle, by ‘little to no language learning of my own’ what I actually mean is active, conscious, intentional language learning activities.

Fortunately, years back I made some wise decisions, one of which was to never, ever listen to English-language media when I could be listening in the language I’m learning.

When I was first in Italy my vice of choice was the BBC World Service, on crackly shortwave radio – this being before streaming on the internet, smartphones and so on.

Years later I realised that I hadn’t made much progress with Italian, unsurprisingly since I spoke English at work and at home. Don’t blame lazy migrants for not assimilating – it certainly is possible to live in a foreign land but fail to learn the language, and I was evidence of that.

Several decades later I started learning Swedish, the idea being to show OnlineItalianClub.com members that it really is possible to teach yourself a language while remaining at home in your own country.

You’ll find articles about it on our ‘Best of’ page if you have the patience to scroll all the way down to the end of 2016 then work through the years after (I really got going during the pandemic…)

Remembering the advice I often gave my students, and hoping to avoid repeating my incredibly slow progress with Italian, I resolved to listen to media only in my target language (later, languages).

By 2016 shortwave radios were no longer an essential bit of kit. In fact there was so much Swedish media available on the Internet the problem was knowing where to start.

The trick, I found, is to invest a little time trying things out – so radio, TV, etc. – from what’s available to you, with the aim of finding something that you LIKE, in the sense of that it will fill the gap left when you stop listening/watching in your own language.

If it’s too hard, too boring, or too difficult to access, then that’s a no-go. Don’t waste your time on something that’s never going to stick.

But try stuff out (you could start here if you have no better options: https://www.raiplaysound.it/) and you will eventually find something that scratches your listening itch.

Look for something you can listen to while exercising or doing chores, for instance. Something you can get on your smartphone. Something that’s free, and that’s available every day, or at least regularly.

My go-tos are:

– Nyheter från Ekot (daily thirty-minute compilation of news stories, both Swedish and international)

– USApodden (several times weekly analysis of American political goings on. Sadly now suspended for the holidays.)

– Plånboken (hour-long weekly consumer affairs program)

– franceinfo (rolling news French radio)

I have other languages, and loads of apps and options, but when I listen to anything these days it’s almost always the first or fourth items in list above.

Thirty minutes of Swedish, French as long as I’ve the desire for noise and company, no English (except an episode of ER in the evening, on the couch with Stefi and Bug).

And Italian? Just on the car radio these days, and then, mostly music. As I said, it’s perfectly possible to live in a country yet mostly ignore it.

Takeaways:

1. IF you replace listening in your own language with listening in your target language (most people refuse to even try), and IF you make it a habit (so choose something intrinsically interesting), then you can still be learning years from now, without even trying! The gift – to yourself – which keeps on giving.

2. And that way, you totally can learn a foreign language without ever leaving home, and without much effort, either. As long as you can sustain the habit over time.

3. The same technique works for reading, too. But who reads these days? Forget I said that.

4. For both reading and listening, starting off with simplified materials boosts confidence and helps you hone the skills needed to listen to the authentic (i.e. aimed at native speakers) version at some point in the future. Both Swedish and French radios have broadcasts aimed at language learners. I took full advantage.

I’m not trying to sell anything today. EasyItalianNews.com – the website that Stefi (the editor), Hannah (pictures and formatting) and Tom (the voice) produce three times a week is free.

EasyItalianNews.com is ‘simplified’, sort-of, it’s free, and it’s three times a week.

It’s there to help learners transition to ‘authentic’, ‘long-form’ listening in their target language, as generous websites and radio stations helped me do with Swedish and French. In fact, that’s where I stole the idea.

Patrick left a comment on that website the other day, which is worth republishing here:

Would it be possible to have a separate audio clip for each news item rather than just the one clip for all the items? It would make it easier to use if, for example, I was concentrating on the third item and wanted to replay that section several times without having to search for the start point.

For non-EasyItalianNews.com subscribers (subscribing is free, see below), the site publishes and emails out to nearly twenty-thousand learners three bulletins of ‘easy’ news, in Italian, obviously. There’s a text (take a look at the website for an example) and one continuous audio track, around eight minutes long.

The idea is simple: you press play and – if you wish – follow the written text as you listen. Listen the whole way through, without stopping. Then repeat, in whichever way pleases you (listen + read, read only, listen only, some sequence of those). BUT WITHOUT STOPPING.

The point – which I failed to explain to Patrick – is that the purpose of the site is not to provide snippets of Italian that people can pore over until they ‘understand everything properly’ but to offer a real Italian listening experience – with a supporting text – that over time will help learners transition to listening to authentic ‘long form’ material (radio, TV, etc.)

You wouldn’t expect to stop the radio and listen again, right? Still less a lecturer at an Italian college, or your new Italian boss when she’s giving a presentation?

Getting to the point that you can ‘follow’ ‘long form’ audio takes time, regular exposure, but above all practice LISTENING WITHOUT STOPPING.

My reply to Patrick:

As regards your request, have you looked at our FAQ? https://easyitaliannews.com/faq/#faq15 This question has been asked many times before, but there are good reasons why we do it the way we do, and it’s important (for people’s progress in Italian, and their sanity) that those are understood.

How BEST to use EIN (i.e. to achieve what it’s designed to help you achieve, rather than wasting time on some other goal that the material is not intended to help with) is also covered on our Advice page: https://easyitaliannews.com/how-to-use-easyitaliannews-com/

Though it seems he didn’t appreciate it:

Thanks, but you haven’t addressed my particular enquiry. There’s nothing in FAQ,that does this.

I try to be patient. I really do! It’s just that sometimes I don’t manage it:

Apologies, I thought it was obvious.

The site is for? LONG FORM LISTENING, to TRANSITION YOU TO AUTHENTIC MEDIA, such as TV NEWS BROADCASTS.

So you should use it how? LISTEN ALL THE WAY THROUGH WITHOUT STOPPING

You’d like to stop and listen to individual sections multiple times to hear them better? YOU’RE ON THE WRONG WEBSITE.

Advice page: https://easyitaliannews.com/how-to-use-easyitaliannews-com/

Così.

Back in 2018 no one was providing for learners of Italian what generous Swedish and French people had given me. I know, because I looked, hoping to link to it for the benefit of club members.

So I did it myself. And paid for it myself. In a year or so it broke even. Eventually it started making a small profit (people donate).

The material is free, it’s thrice-weekly, and given time it helps a lot.

Use it or misuse it as you please.

But if you want Italian radio/TV/social media to be your go-to for listening/watching at some point in the seemingly distant future – which is totally possible, as I think I’ve demonstrated – you could do a lot worse than building yourself an EasyItalianNews.com habit.

And listening all the way through without stopping.

Give it six months before you come back and tell me I’m wrong. No one ever does, though.

Alla prossima settimana!

P.S.

And here’s the inevitable 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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