Buondì.
I tested positive again yesterday, though my wife was negative, which meant she could put Roomie in her stroller and go buy beer. Roomie’s status is ‘presumed negative’, as she doesn’t have symptoms and, in any case, no one who values their eyes and fingers will contemplate twirling a cotton tipped plastic stick in each of her nostrils for twenty seconds. Anyway, here’s another recycled article, and now you know why!
Tomorrow is the final day of the 2022 SummerSale (details here) at our (now two!) online stores, EasyReaders.org (for ebooks) and NativeSpeakerTeachers.com (for one-to-one lessons).
Use the coupon code below to save 20% on the online lessons and/or ebooks you’ll need to improve your Italian over the summer:
2022-Summer-Sale-20%-Off
And here are the store links:
It never ceases to amaze me how many people buy on the final weekend of a promotion, on the final day, even in the final hours.
If you, too, have been leaving things until the last minute, this is the penultimate reminder. This marketing stuff has to get done, to keep people in their jobs and to pay the bills.
However, it’ll be what you DO with your Italian, not what you spend today or tomorrow, that’ll make the difference to your learning.
This time two years ago (I’m reusing this text for the third or fouth time) Chris wrote me a lovely, long email describing her journey with Italian (she was finally weaning herself off Duolingo, she told me…)
So of course, I had to write back.
And things being really, really busy today and tomorrow, I thought I’d end this week-long marketing splurge with an extract from my reply:
The thing that made a difference to me was realising the gulf between ‘studying’ and learning – they’re absolutely not synonyms, and it’s quite possible for one to happen without the other. I can study if I have to, but I enjoy the learning process more when it’s the result of immersing myself in media or actually interacting with people.
As regards listening, I tell people this but they don’t believe me – it’s not about ‘understanding’! The opposite, in fact. If you focus on the meaning, your range of sources is hugely restricted, as you can only work with highly-simplified materials. Whereas if you just DO it, without worrying if you understand or not, as the total number of hours of listening mount up, ‘understanding’ just sort of creeps up on you. Not everything, obviously, but familiarity with the media helps – listen, for example, to our news website as suggested here and, given enough time (a year is reasonable), you really WILL notice a huge difference.
I’m currently alternating live radio in Swedish, Turkish, French and Spanish, perhaps thirty minutes a day of each, and the amazing thing is, once it becomes routine, the brain just adjusts. I’d never have believed it if I hadn’t watched it happening to myself. This is RTVE.es ‘Todas las noticias en Radio 5’, next it’s ‘France.info’ on the virus and nothing but the virus, then TRT FM’s evening phone-in and light music program, and finally the news headlines in Swedish.
Put the hours in and the magic will just happen. Once you figure that out, messing about with DL just seems like a waste of time, except in the first few months, perhaps.
People are different, of course. You have to find your own way. But there’s no denying, it takes LOTS OF TIME to master a foreign language.
Practise, practise and more practise is required, which means finding material that interests you sufficiently that you can keep using it, week after week, month after month. Duo gets that bit right, at least.
From Monday, by the way, things will be back to normal, with just the three articles a week, each Monday, Wednesday and Friday.
Plus, of course, the thrice-weekly EasyItalianNews.com bulletins on Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday (didn’t you ever ask yourself why those days?)
But no more marketing messages on Saturdays and Sundays, not until the next offer, anyway.
Weekends are for learning!
A domani.
P.S. (For the ‘will definitely get around to doing this’ people)
The coupon code is: 2022-Summer-Sale-20%-Off
Use it here:
EasyReaders.org (for ebooks) | NativeSpeakerTeachers.com (for one-to-one lessons)
What if you write to me or Lucia on Monday asking for the 20% discount on your online lessons??
We’ll shrug.
Heartlessly.
Sorry, no can do, we’ll explain.
The offer is finished – O.V.E.R.
It ended on Sunday night.
EasyReaders.org (ebooks) | NativeSpeakerTeachers.com (lessons)