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

+++

Buondì.

A few days back I had a long email from someone who explained that she was doing well with her A1 (= elementary) -level Italian studies, could read our materials, understand what she heard, and so on. But that she couldn’t speak. She was blocked.

Being blocked is common with a new language, also with one you know well but haven’t used for a while. A little practice and your brain unblocks itself. I’ve written about that often.

She never acknowleded the email I wrote her back, so I didn’t get the chance to ask permission to publish her words in this article.

But there’s no copyright on ideas. And I need no permission to quote myself, right?

From what I understood, the person wants to learn to speak Italian effortlessly ‘like an Italian’, but also properly. And she definitely doesn’t want to sound like Borat.

Don’t know who Borat is? Then you should definitely watch this trailer for his 2006 movie:

https://youtu.be/ZN-dGVbCjLI?si=wZasl5Q3keIbByrR

In the original email the writer also expressed doubt about what she understands to be my own approach to learning (and teaching) languages.

Again, I’m carefully avoiding quoting, so won’t repeat the prepositional verb she used, but here’s a dictionary defintion:

To “?????? ?????” means to manage a situation or succeed at a task despite a lack of skill, organization, or clear planning.

I lack skill, organisation, or clear planning? Au contraire!

I’ve been trying and failing to learn foreign languages for forty years, and taught English to foreigners for more than thirty. The suggestions I make in articles like this one absolutely do involve skill, organization and clear planning.

It’s simply that I believe learners typically neglect the ‘skills’ side of language-learning (listening, speaking, reading, writing) to the detriment of their progress and enjoyment, while prioritizing grammar study and memorization of vocabulary, both of which are demonstably a waste of time and effort.

You have my permission to IGNORE GRAMMAR and to NEVER MEMORISE ANYTHING. Go in peace.

But don’t take it from me.

‘Everyone knows’ – and Italians repeat this to me all the time when trying to excuse their total ignorance of English or any other foreign language – ‘that if you move to the country where the language is spoken, it’s much easier to learn.’

The implication being that my prowess in italiano is merely a function of my geographic location.

That’s nonsense, of course. Plenty of people live permanently in other countries but can’t speak the language. And I learn Swedish each day, while living in Bologna, Italy.

However, what ‘everyone knows’ does reinforce the point that doing lots of speaking, listening and reading in the language you’re trying to acquire is likely to help rather than hinder.

Getting enough reading/listening/speaking practice and – most essentially – practice opportunities that are appropriate to your current level, goals, learning style, and so on, absolutely requires clear planning, organization, and skill.

My advice, by the way, is summarised here: How to learn Italian (or any language) And yes, of course it’s rather long. Everything I write is rather long (it’s a function of being my own editor, and the boss).

But then, so is the process of learning a foreign language. Lifelong.

Anyway, here’s what I replied to the A1 (elementary) woman:

As regards sounding like Borat, why is that a problem? Most people in the world would be more than happy to have the competence in a foreign language that that fictional character has in English. Other than bilingual kids of migrant families, and the increasingly few college modern language graduates, few people in Britain or America could do better than Borat.

Your problem is basically one of having inappropriate expectations. You write “I’m not sure if 1 or even 2 lessons a week would it be enough to make everything second nature as it does with native Italians.”

Well of course it won’t. But if you approach conversations with native speakers in a more positive light you might enjoy yourself anyway, make some friends, and perhaps stop worrying about being perfect, so not looking stupid.

I live in Italy and speak bad Italian every day. No one seems to care. I don’t. Language is a tool, that’s all. Today I made my doctor laugh out loud.

I don’t live in Sweden or Turkey (or France or Spain) but if I ever get the chance to chat with native speakers in their own language, people are unfailingly enthusiastic. It’s very gratifying, and again, no one cares if my speech is not perfect.

Hope that helps.

Alla prossima settimana!

2026 Back to School Sale! Italian self-study workbooks -25%

As part of the 2026 Back to School! promotion (see below for details), today we’re drawing your attention to our six ‘self-study workbooks‘.

Each has a substantial free sample, so you can take a look to see if this material might help you progress. There are links below to download the free samples.

And each/all can be discounted 25%, assuming you remember to use the Back to School! coupon code (details of how to do that are below, in the P.S.)

Here’s are the details from our ebooks catalog:

Italian Self-Study Workbooks

The Tenses You Need To Speak Italian £19.99 | Download FREE sample (.pdf)

Italian Workout! A1 £19.99 | Download FREE sample (.pdf)

Italian Workout! A2 £19.99 | Download FREE sample (.pdf)

Italian Workout! B1 £19.99 | Download FREE sample (.pdf)

Italian Workout! B2 £19.99 | Download FREE sample (.pdf)

Italian Workout! C1/2 £19.99 | Download FREE sample (.pdf)

Not that into studying?

So why not work on improving your reading/listening comprehension skills instead?

Browse the ‘easy readers’ in our ebooks catalog, where they’re organised by type and level, all with free sample chapters and free online audio!

P.S. Don’t forget, the Back to School! coupon code promotion!

Until Sunday September 13th 2026 everything in our online ebooks store (including the grammar workbooks!) is 25% cheaper, though only IF you remember to use this coupon code:

2026-Back-to-School-25%-Off

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

Catalog

Or browse Italian ebooks by level: A1 | A1/A2 | A2 | A2/B1 | B1 | B1/B2 | B2 | B2/C1 | C1 | C1/C2 | C2

To get your discount, just copy and paste coupon code 2026-Back-to-School-25%-Off into your shopping cart, then scroll down to check the cart total has been reduced by 25%.

Coupon code 2026-Back-to-School-25%-Off also works on graded material for learning Spanish, French or German.

Apply coupon code 2026-Back-to-School-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 | French | Spanish | German

Here’s that coupon code again:

2026-Back-to-School-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 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.

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

+++

Buondì.

When an article like this one gets picked up by our expensive bulk mailing system to be sent to the tens of thousands of people who have chosen to receive club news, promotions (scroll down), and NAGS ABOUT MAKING THE MOST OF OUR FREE MATERIAL (see below, and the P.S.), quite often someone will reply, in Spanish, something like “no hablo ingles”.

Years back I got bored of asking them why they filled in a form IN ENGLISH to receive email communications IN ENGLISH. These days I just sigh, and unsubscribe them.

More irritating than that is the woman – I won’t mention her name – who subscribed to one or other of our lists using an email account on which she’s set up an auto-responder message, which replies something like “I rarely check this email so if it’s important, please phone me instead.”

Every time I send a bulk email to whichever list that is, that autoresponder message pops into my inbox seconds later. Va bene, at least I know the bulk mailiing got sent.

But unlike banks and so on, who are supposedly customer-focused, hah hah, I never use ‘no reply’ emails to communicate with people, so actually do see – and read – any responses. If you have a stupid auto-responder message, be aware that someone far away is muttering curses at you while you’ve relaxing ‘out of office’.

Back in the day, that’s to say before the European Union’s latest data protections, I at least had the satisfaction of knowing that tot percentage of the tens of thousands of club members received/opened the emailed article.

But now that no longer happens. There’s no legit way of knowing. Bulk mailing these days is like dropping a stone down a very deep, dark well, then listening for the splash. Which doesn’t come.

A common response to ‘club’ emails (like this one) is a brief phrase, perhaps in English, often not, saying something like:

“I want to learn Italian”.

Wow, you amaze me, I exclaim sarcastically. So what’s stopping you? Idiot.

So, just to restate how the club works, for the thousands of you who weren’t paying attention when you chose to receive articles like this one via email:

1.) Everything on the club website is free.

2.) You don’t need to be a ‘member’ to access it. There are no user names, no login processes, no passwords.

3.) Use the website in any way you wish, free, with no restriction on time, approach, level, and so on.

4.) But PEOPLE BEING PEOPLE (and I am a person, too), they’ll discover a good resource online, make plans to go back and profit from it, but never do. Mea culpa.

5.) Hence the emailed articles: a weekly reminder to get your act together, plus often an attempt to sell you something (see below) so we can pay the club’s bills. We’re currently making a loss, which is a bore.

All this is actually explained to people in advance, for instance on the website’s Join page.

But people don’t read any longer. Especially now with AI offering to summarise emails for people.

I got a warning last week, from a company that provides useful bits and pieces for website owners – to do with sending emails, I won’t bore you with the details.

Basically they were saying that the AI in iPhones will now be reading the emails that marketers (and language educators) send out, which people have actively chosen to receive, presumably to save iPhone owners from having to exercise their brains/waste time on Daniel’s drivel.

(Holds up middle finger.)

Summarise this, Apple.

OK, so that’s the rant.

Now, dear reader, for if you have got this far, you are evidently one of the few readers left, so dear to me, here’s the NAG part.

In every, single club email I remind people in the P.S. (scroll right down past the promotion to verify this) that reading and listening to Italian will speed up your learning, especially your comprehension skills, which I know from thirty-plus years of language teaching that the majority of learners neglect.

And that you can do that for free at our other website EasyItalianNews.com.

Yesterday I was browsing their numbers for August and I noticed that fewer and fewer people are signing up for the three free emailed bulletins they publish and email out each week.

That’s AI again, probably. The world is going to hell in a handbasket.

But, BUT, I thought…

There are approximately thirty-five thousand club members. People who are supposedly learning Italian, yet less than half that number of EasyItalianNews.com subscribers.

This is not for want of nagging.

The probable explanation is that people are dumb about language-learning, believing (tell me it’s not so, Joe) that FIRST I NEED TO LEARN ALL THE GRAMMAR. THEN, I WILL READ, LISTEN AND SPEAK.

Which is total nonsense, as I proved to club members years back by learning Swedish (their choice) and demonstrating that regular listening, reading and speaking will reliably get you from zero to hero.

I listen to Swedish most days, chat to a native speaker most weeks, and can claim (approximately) to be an autonomous user of the language (i.e. B1-B2), having hardly ever visited the country and barely having studied the language at all, perhaps just a few weeks of incomprehensible grammar at the start.

Practice + Time = Learning

Reading & listening to the language you hope to master is also not boring, so easy to build into a habit which is sustainable over time.

Yesterday I had an email from someone who’s bought various of our ‘easy reader’ ebooks (see promotion below), and read them, but never thought to listen to the online audio which, for best results should be used together with the written text.

When he finally decided to give it a go, it was much too fast!!

Beh, è così.

Neglect the skills work and the result will be that you won’t be able to understand what people say to you, or enjoy and learn from online media.

Your bad.

Did I mention that EasyItalianNews.com is completely free?

Did I mention that less than half of people receiving this emailed article are profiting from it?

I rest my case. Consider yourself nagged.

Alla prossima settimana!

2026 Back to School Sale! ‘Easy reader’ ebook picks at your level

Last Monday we announced that our 2026 ‘Back to School’ Sale had begun. Find out more here.

So today, as part of this promotion, I’m going to give you my top ebook picks for beginner, intermediate, and advanced-learners of Italian – I hope there’ll be something here that grabs you!

When I say ‘my top picks’, what I mean is the ebooks that I have enjoyed the most (I read them all, multiple times, during the editing and publishing process).

My criteria is just that: enjoyment. Why?

Because as a language-learner myself, I find that if there’s a story that engages me (whether it’s a news article, or fiction, like our ‘easy readers’), I’ll keep turning the page.

And if I can’t (metaphorically) put an ebook down, my reading comprehension skills improve, and with them my knowledge of vocabulary, and my confidence with the grammar of the language I’m learning.

As any teacher (or student) knows, boredom is the enemy! So a writer that knows how to craft a text so that it pulls you in and won’t let go, even if it’s ‘just’ language-study material, is indeed a useful ally!

Don’t forget, the 2026 Back to School Sale is on! To get 25% off everything in your shopping cart, copy/paste the coupon code, which is:

2026-Back-to-School-25%-Off

Bene, let’s get to it. I’m on the Catalog page of our online shop, starting a little way down, where it says ‘Italian Easy Readers’ (if you’re learning another language, you’ll need to scroll down the Catalog page and make your own selections, sorry!)

So we have seventeen easy reader ebooks for A1 and A2 students, six at A1 (the lowest level), eight at the ‘half-level’ A1/2, and three at A2 (the harder ones). If you’re not sure which level is right for you, use the Free Sample links and take a look. You should be able to get the gist of the story with only occasional use of a dictionary.

N.b. This article was written a couple of years ago. Since then we’ve published other ebooks, so the selection at your level is probably even more ample than described below. Our Catalog page is always up-to-date, so includes the most recent titles, and free sample chapters!

So honestly? I enjoyed all seventeen. but I’ve been strict with myself and whittled the total down to just two at each level, concentrating on the ones I liked the MOST – the stories that made me actually care about the characters, and about what happened to them next!

(These are extracts from our Catalog page, so you can also see the price, the available formats, and a link to the free sample chapter for each title…)

A1

Colpo di forbici (A1) £9.99 Download FREE sample (.pdf, .epub, .mobi/Kindle)
Rosa la cuoca disastrosa (A1) £9.99 Download FREE sample (.pdf, .epub, .mobi/Kindle)

A1/2

Il giocoliere (A1/2) £9.99 Download FREE sample (.pdf, .epub, .mobi/Kindle)
L’ascensore (A1/2) £9.99 Download FREE sample (.pdf, .epub, .mobi/Kindle)

A2

Cielo libero (A2) £9.99 Download FREE sample (.pdf, .epub, .mobi/Kindle)
L’amore ai tempi del supermercato (A2) £9.99 Download FREE sample (.pdf, .epub, .mobi/Kindle)

What if those were too easy for you? Nessun problema. For ‘intermediate’ learners we have loads and loads of materials – twenty-two separate titles!

The hard part was choosing between them, but again, I’ve been strict and narrowed it down to two stories at each half level…

A2/B1

2 giugno 1946 (A2/B1) £9.99 Download FREE sample (.pdf, .epub, .mobi/Kindle)
Il campo di papaveri (A2/B1) £9.99 Download FREE sample (.pdf, .epub, .mobi/Kindle)

B1

Caccia all’autografo (B1) £9.99 Download FREE sample (.pdf, .epub, .mobi/Kindle)
Dante, gatto vagante (B1) £9.99 Download FREE sample (.pdf, .epub, .mobi/Kindle)

B1/B2

L’imperatore e i giochi (B1/2) £9.99 Download FREE sample (.pdf, .epub, .mobi/Kindle)
Segreti e polpette (B1/2) £9.99 Download FREE sample (.pdf, .epub, .mobi/Kindle)

B2

Natale a sorpresa (B2) £9.99 Download FREE sample (.pdf, .epub, .mobi/Kindle)
Le italiane (B2) £9.99 Download FREE sample (.pdf, .epub, .mobi/Kindle)

Hope there was something there that called out “Read me!”

But if you looked at the sample chapters and they were STILL to simple for you, firstly, well done for reading Italian for such confidence, and secondly, brace yourself now for the hard stuff!

B2/C1

Prometeo e la guerra dei titani (B2/C1) £9.99 Download FREE sample (.pdf, .epub, .mobi)
Il bar (B2/C1) £9.99 Download FREE sample (.pdf, .epub, .mobi)

C1

La commediante (C1) £9.99 Download FREE sample (.pdf, .epub, .mobi)
I racconti della vestale (C1) £9.99 Download FREE sample (.pdf, .epub, .mobi)

C1/C2

Anselmo e l’omicidio di Giovanni Borgia (C1/2) £9.99 Download FREE sample (.pdf, .epub, .mobi/Kindle)
Il vulcano (C1/2) £9.99 Download FREE sample (.pdf, .epub, .mobi/Kindle)

C2

La Via Francigena (C2) £9.99 Download FREE sample (.pdf, .epub, .mobi/Kindle)
La carriera – dietro le quinte del Palio di Siena (C2) £9.99 Download FREE sample (.pdf, .epub, .mobi/Kindle)

Bene. Hope you found lots that will keep you reading in and listening to Italian this autumn/fall!

The prices marked above are the usual, year-round prices but with the 2026 ‘Back to School’ promotion (which ends on Sunday September 13th 2026) everything in our online store (EasyReaders.org) is 25% cheaper!

Copy and paste the coupon code 2026-Back-to-School-25%-Off into your shopping cart, then scroll down to check the cart total has been reduced by 25%.

Make your selections today!

EasyReaders.org

N.b. Check out the ‘easy reader’ ebook MULTIPACKS, which get you a three-for-two deal, or better.

AND the 25% discount!

Assuming you remember to use the coupon code, that is…

2026-Back-to-School-25%-Off

P.S.

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

You know, the club has something like thirty-five THOUSAND ‘members’? Yet EasyItalianNews.com has less than half of that number of subscribers?

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.

SO HOW COME SO FEW CLUB MEMBERS ARE DOING THIS????

+++

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.