Buondì. In just 18 minutes I’ll be closing the screen on my laptop and walking down the street to an appointment at our ‘medico di famiglia’. I have an appointment, so I’ll first interact with the receptionist, who will look up from her desk and say “Buongiorno”, or “Salve” if it’s the one who knows […]
Archives for April 2022
What you’re learning may not be what you think
Buondì. Yesterday evening I was reviewing ‘reported speech’ with a small class of Italian adults. We did it before Easter but, as expected, it had been largely forgotten. Hence the coming back to it again, before moving on to something else. My students were happy to be back in the classroom, chatting away in English […]
A romantic, lower-level, half-price ‘Ebook of the Week’!
Buondì. It’s a public holiday Monday here in Italy, meaning the schools/universities are closed and I have a housefull of bored toddler, plus slumbering adult kids to boot, and no ideas for lunch or dinner. A short one, then! Thanks to everyone who bought our newest ebook while it was on offer last week. Colpa […]
Oops, what happened to 2020 and 2021?
Buondì. I mentioned on Wednesday, and most club members know from long experience, that I write three articles like this one each week, on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays. That’s around a hundred and fifty articles a year. Some of those, perhaps a third, perhaps more, will be standard marketing stuff, for example when we have […]
Have you seen these materials for learning Italian?
Buondì. A quickissimo article today, as I have work piled up, sky-high, this due to having spent the previous four days (and nights) chasing an infant human around, in an effort to keep her away from things she can damage, or that can damage her, while at the same time entertained, stimulated (not too much), […]
25% Off New Ebook Easy Reader – Colpa della terra, Libro 3
Buondì. At the end of March we published the second in a five-part series about an Italian family that migrates to the USA. The rest of the series was due later in the spring, but things got messed up, so those have been brought forward. Today, then, we have the third in the series, which […]
Confirmation bias
Buondì. Wednesday’s article on noticing usage generated a number of emailed responses, but not much variety, as the tendency was to dismiss the point I was hoping to make (basically, get out there and revel in the way language is USED) and instead to offer me a rule which ‘obviously’, ‘clearly’, explained things to the […]
Notice usage
Buondì. Yesterday evening, my class of Italian adults improving their English were working on the Past Perfect tense. They ‘had studied’ it before but ‘hadn’t learnt’ it, despite there being an equivalent in Italian, the trapassato prossimo (find a lesson and two exercises under ‘T’ on the club’s grammar page). In English the tense is […]
Don’t let polyglot nonsense get you down
Buondì. Thanks to club-member Stuart, who emailed an article about an American called Vaughn who’s passionate about languages. Stuart knew it would be of interest, and I’m guessing he also knew it would wind me up, which it did. Large parts of it are total nonsense, and total nonsense that risks depressing the 99.9999% of language […]
2022 Spring Sale: Just a few hours left to save 20%!
There are just a few hours left of the 2022 Spring Sale. Today is the final day, so the last chance to save 20% on everything at our (now two!) online stores, EasyReaders.org (for ebooks) and NativeSpeakerTeachers.com (for one-to-one lessons). The coupon code you need to save 20% on the online lessons and/or ebooks is: Spring-Sale-2022 […]
