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.

It’s mostly ads today, for the ebook -25% Summer Sale that I mentioned in passing last week, and for EasyItalianNews.com, which is completely FREE. I’ll probably mention our Italian school at some point, too.

But not everything costs: don’t forget that there are a lot of materials for learning Italian on the club website. Why not take a few minutes to browse there? You never know what you may find…

For instance there’s my classic, though rather long, article: How to learn Italian (or any language)

There are grammar lessons and exercises, for those who are so inclined.

There are listening exercises, there are verb conjugations, there are a hundred and fifty articles (with audio) about Italian history (from Romans to Belusconi), and much more.

For those who have no idea where to begin, material is organised into the six levels of the CEFR, along with an article ‘Italian Levels: What’s my level in Italian?‘ and a rather primitive level test.

You don’t need a username or password to access any of it, plus it’s all free. Do take a look!

So what’s happening here in Bologna?

Our Italian school is busy, which is pleasing to see. Madrelingua is open the whole summer, except for the public holiday on Friday 15th August. State schools have already closed, of course, though final-year high school students still have their ‘maturità’ to look forward to, and the ‘asili nidi’ are still operational, as is Bug’s petting zoo, thank goodnesss!

At home, the builders’ dust has settled and so been swept up, the floors mopped, books dusted, and the new air-conditioning units tested, though they’ve not been much used yet.

I’ve learnt over the decades that in June it’s best to open all the doors and windows for an hour or two in the morning, to allow the house to cool naturally before the long hours of hot sun to come.

Three more months of summer to look forward to! The ebooks offer is keeping me busy right now (details below), then there’ll be the usual July promotion on one-to-one online lessons over at NativeSpeakerTeachers.com (July 4th to 13th), and after that?

‘Basta’, I’ll just sit and perspire until mid-September.

Well, not just: trips to the beach (Bug likes the sea) and to ‘campings’ with swimming pools are being mooted. Hope you’ll be doing something nice, too, besides learning Italian, obviously.

Alla prossima settimana!

25% Off Graded Italian/Spanish/French/German Study Materials

Don’t know what ‘graded’ study materials are or how they could boost your progress with the language you’re learning? Scroll down to ++++ to find out.

But first, don’t forget the 2025 Summer Sale is running this month and next, which means a 25% saving on graded material for learning Italian, Spanish, French, and German.

Everything in our online store, EasyReaders.org, is a quarter cheaper until midnight on June 24th 2025.

But only if you remember to use this coupon code:

2025-Beach-Reads-25%-Off

Make your selection from our range of ebooks, which have been especially written to keep you interested and making progress.

Apply coupon code 2025-Beach-Reads-25%-Off in your shopping cart to reduce the cart total by 25%!

Stock up on online easy readers, parallel texts and grammar workbooks – at an unbeatable price!

Italian | Spanish | French | German

Here’s that coupon code again:

2025-Beach-Reads-25%-Off

Don’t forget to use it when you order to save 25% on the price of everything in your cart!

Italian | Spanish | French | German

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Everyone learning a foreign language is familiar with the concept of ‘level’.

Some materials are just too hard for where you’re currently at, others might seem just right, whereas the texts you worked on months ago will now, hopefully, feel easy.

We all know that it can be difficult (impossible!) to understand films and so on in the languages we’re learning, or to read an authentic article, say from a newspaper, which is written for educated native-speaker readers.

And yet, clearly, listening to the language as it is really used, and reading articles written in it, are important long-term goals, even if they seem unachievable for the moment.

Plus, it seems likely that the more we read and listen, the more meaningful our studies will be, the more new words we’ll pick up, and the more we’ll feel familiar with the grammar and structures of the languages we’re learning.

Reading and listening to the language you’re studying are unarguably good ways to speed your progress, and in any case, training yourself to listen and to read effectively in the new language is obviously going to be necessary at some point.

But authentic materials are HARD! Often too hard.

The solution to this quandry?

‘Graded’ texts, that is to say materials written by language teachers for learners like you, and designated as suitable for those who have reached or are above a particular level.

The CEFR level system uses six level bands, which are (from easiest to hardest): A1, A2, B1, B2, C1 and C2.

Assume that students at the C levels should be reading and listening to authentic (real-life) texts and audio without too much difficulty. The graded materials at those levels, then, will approximate texts written for native-speakers.

People at the intermediate stage (the B levels) are not yet ready for ‘real’ or ‘nearly real’ listening and reading, but still need to build their skills in anticipation. So the graded materials will be an in-between step, aimed at challenging students to develop their skills further.

The easiest materials (at A1 and A2 levels) are designed to be unintimidating, which means short chapters and simple or simpler grammar and vocabulary. Their purpose is to encourage learners to get into the HABIT of reading and listening to the language they’re learning as early on in the process as possible.

The more reading & listening you do early on, the easier everything that follows will be. You’ll already be used to, for example, guessing meaning from context in a text, or getting the gist of the spoken language even when you can’t pick out every word.

Graded materials are useful at every language-learning level, but their real power can be seen when they are incorporated as an integral part of our studies right from Day 1 with a new language.

The difference between a learner who regularly reads and listens to graded materials, and one who never or rarely spends time on anything other than grammar and vocabulary exercises, is plain to see, if for no other reason than that a student who has no fear of reading and listening (because she is using materials that have been specifically written for her level, remember) comes across as being more confident and more autonomous.

How to find graded materials for your level? Our Catalog page lists materials by type and in level order, which should help.

But importantly, there’s always a free sample chapter, which you should absolutely look at before deciding to buy a particular title.

Have a look at the first few lines, the first paragraph, the first page, even the whole of the first chapter. Can you manage to figure out what’s going on in the story without too much effort, without constantly reaching for the dictionary?

If not, step down a level, try another free sample chapter, keep looking until you find something that you’re comfortable with. Don’t forget to check out the free online audio, if there is one. Usually the link is at the top of the first chapter…

Then, if the story grabs you, go ahead and buy a copy! Read a chapter a day, perhaps. There are usually eight short chapters, so in not much more than a week, you’ll be done.

At which point, you could check out other titles at the same level, or look at free sample chapters for the next level (or half-level) up, to see if you’re ready for something a little more challenging.

Aim to establish a reading/listening HABIT. Move up to the next level only when you’re comfortable, no need to rush,

Gradually, month by month, your reading/listening skills will improve, as will your knowledge of the grammar and vocabulary of the language you’re learning.

With graded materials, such as ‘easy readers’ and ‘parallel texts’, you’ll master the language you’re studying step-by-step, almost without realising it!

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Stock up on online easy readers, parallel texts and grammar workbooks – at an unbeatable price!

Italian | Spanish | French | German

Here’s that coupon code again:

2025-Beach-Reads-25%-Off

Don’t forget to use it when you order to save 25% on the price of everything in your cart!

P.S.

And here’s the usual Wednesday reminder to read/listen to Tuesdays (FREE) bulletin of news from EasyItalianNews.com.

Not familiar with EasyItalianNews.com?

Take a look at their website then, and get started on improving your Italian (FOR FREE!)

Subscribe (also FREE) and you’ll get all three text + audio bulletins of ‘easy’ news via email each week, on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays.

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)

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.

I’ve been a bit overwhelmed lately, first by some horrible virus, then as a result of having a home full of Sicilian builders for three days over the holiday weekend.

Stefi decided that Bug and I would be more comfortable in the hot summer months if we had air-conditioning fitted downstairs, and a friend of a friend offered to do the work for us, a former ‘muratore’ apparently, highly-recommended, and cheap.

She then took herself and Bug, driven by Tom of EasyItalianNews.com fame, down to the Adriatic coast for the three-day holiday weekend, leaving me to nurse my tender insides and open the door to the workmen as and when called upon to do so. Win win.

Now there’s one thing you should know about Italian builders/muratori: it’s against their sworn code of brotherhood to just mount a cooling appliance on your wall, run an electric cable to the nearest socket, and make a small hole through a wall for the collant tubes and condensation pipes to reach the external fan unit.

Oh no, mio dio, that would not do!

It would be ugly, it would be unprofessional, it would be illegal even. More to the point, it would take about ten minutes, rather than three whole days.

Much, much better to break open the century-old brick walls – creating buckets of waste and kilos of dust in the process – so as to hide the cables, tubes and pipes within the wall, then fill in the holes, plaster it over nicely, a coat or two of paint, and Bob’s your uncle!

Sicilian builders are an irristable force, so I just sighed and got to moving furniture that had not been touched in two decades, piling up Bug’s chew toys in one corner, Stefi’s wool mountain in another, shifting the decades-long accumulation of dusty paperbacks into the garage, sweeping up dessicated mouse droppings, and so on.

The work began on Saturday morning, surprisingly early. Today’s Tuesday (Wednesday for you) yet things still aren’t back to normal…

The walls look great!! Better than before, definitely.

But where the two cooling units are supposed to be, there are just neat holes, with tubes and cables sticking out of them.

No problem, apparently. Actually putting them up will be child’s play!

At least, it will once the guy who has the permit to fill the system with greenhouse gases can be persuaded to do a little overtime, in what is his busiest period of year.

No matter. The REAL WORK was the muratore part, and that’s all been done, see?

It’s thirty-four degrees Celsius (93.2 Fahrenheit) here in Bologna today. It’ll be the same tomorrow. Our Italian school has air-conditioning in each classroom, by the way. There are pictures here: https://madrelinguaitalian.com/madrelingua-italian-school/

So anyway, many thanks to the people who responded to last week’s article by leaving a comment at the website (rather than emailing…)

If you have the voglia, read nine comments on that article here: https://onlineitalianclub.com/the-club-vibe-and-why-you-should-invest-in-it-not-email/#comments

Some people also commented on the previous week’s article. Read those here: https://onlineitalianclub.com/why-you-should-quit-studying-italian/#comments

On the site, comments are shown in date order from oldest to newest, so scroll down to follow the conversations, such as they are.

By the way, to find out if club members are commenting on things elsewhere (usually not, but who knows…) there’s a clickable widget on the homepage, where it says ‘Join the conversation!’, showing the newest comments. Find that here: https://onlineitalianclub.com/

To add a comment of your own, follow the instructions in last week’s article: https://onlineitalianclub.com/the-club-vibe-and-why-you-should-invest-in-it-not-email/

25% COUPON CODE FOR EBOOKS

One of the things I was supposed to be doing over the weekend, instead of sweeping up brick dust, was to launch our ebook store‘s ‘BEACH READS!’ summer promotion.

Look on the shop website and you’ll find no mention of it.

While the promotion officially started on Tuesday 3rd June, I won’t be hitting the ebooks store mailing lists with the coupon code until at least tomorrow.

However, I have got as far as to create and test the coupon code, which is valid for a discount of 25% on anything/everything you find at EasyReaders.org.

It’s

2025-Beach-Reads-25%-Off

and the catalog page, where you’ll find ebooks for people learning Italian (organised by type and in level order) is

https://easyreaders.org/catalogue/

There’ll be more on that promotion, both here and direct to the ebooks store’s mailing list, over the next few weeks, as the promo doesn’t end until Tuesday June 24th.

E così. Gotta go collect Bug from the petting zoo.

Alla prossima settimana!

Or possibly sooner if I get time to work on the ebooks promo…

LAST CHANCE FOR Half-price Ebook of the Week, ‘2 giugno 1946’ (A2/B1), £4.99

The half-price promotion on our ebook 2 giugno 1946 will be switched off in the next few days, so if you didn’t get your copy…

June 2nd seventy-nine years back was a historic moment in Italy, and this ebook celebrates that, as well as providing invaluable and enjoyable skills practice for students of Italian.

The level of this one is A2/B1 (pre-intermediate/intermediate). Do check out the Free Sample Chapter (.pdf) (which includes a link to the free online audio for the entire story…) to see if the material is right for you.

Bologna, 2nd of June 1946. Italy is slowly recovering from the devastating effects of World War II. A referendum has been organised to decide whether the reborn state will be a republic or continue as a monarchy. And for the first time in history, Italian women can go to the polls! Newly-wed Marcella is so excited at the prospect she barely slept last night. But her husband, Antonio, is unconvinced…

• .pdf e-book (+ audio available free online)
• .mobi (Kindle-compatible) and .epub (other ebook readers) available on request at no extra charge – just add a note to the order form or email us
• 8 chapters to read and listen to
• Comprehension questions to check your understanding
• Italian/English glossary of ‘difficult’ terms for the level
• Suitable for students at any level
• Download your Free Sample Chapter (.pdf)

Buy 2 giugno 1946, just £4.99! | Free Sample Chapter | History/historical ‘easy readers’ | Catalog

Or find more ebooks, organised by level, then type: A1 | A1/A2 | A2 | A2/B1 | B1 | B1/B2 | B2 | B2/C1 | C1 | C1/C2 | C2

How do I access my ebook?

When your order is ‘completed’ (normally immediately after your payment), a download link will be automatically emailed to you. It’s valid for 7 days and 3 download attempts so please save a copy of the .pdf ebook in a safe place. Other versions of the ebook, where available, cannot be downloaded but will be emailed to people who request them. There’s a space to do that on the order form – where it says Additional information, Order notes (optional). If you forget, or if you have problems downloading the .pdf, don’t worry! Email us at the address on the website and we’ll help. Also, why not check out our FAQ?

P.S.

Many thanks from the EIN team to everyone who donated during the appeal last week.

They couldn’t produce the thrice-weekly text+audio bulletins without such support from Italian students around the world.

Not familiar with EasyItalianNews.com?

Take a look at their website and get started on improving your Italian, FOR FREE (there’ll be another appeal for donations in July…)

Better still, get all three text + audio bulletins of ‘easy’ news emailed to you each week, on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays by subscribing (also for 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)