Buondì.
A quick one today, as I’ve a lot to do, with the Summer Sale and the up-coming Summer Series. Two many Ss there, I know. I’ll take it up with the marketing dept. (wait, that’s me!)
As a reminder, our quarterly promotion, which we run at approximately 13-week intervals (summer, autumn/fall, New Year, spring), and which gets you a 20% discount on everything in our two online shops, begins on Monday July 3rd and ends on Sunday July 9th.
You’ll need the COUPON CODE to get your discount, and that will be emailed to club members on Monday, along with details as to how and where to use it.
If you’re anxious to get started, check out EasyReaders.org (ebooks) and NativeSpeakerTeachers.com (1-1 lessons). Maybe add stuff that grabs you to your shopping cart (you can always remove it again)? But DON’T BUY UNTIL YOU HAVE THE COUPON CODE. Isn’t this exciting?
What? You say you’re not excited at all about the promotion, because you signed up for the club to get the promised “three free exercises each week”? (I had several moany emails this week…)
Calma. The club website has hundreds, maybe thousands of free exercises, organised in six levels and available to anyone who wants to use them, club member or no, for free, any time. Start here.
And if you read the articles I write, including this one, there’s almost always a link to EasyItalianNews.com, which produces three (3) free (!!) exercises (well bulletins, really, but they’re designed for students to learn with) each week. So my conscience is clear.
If you’d prefer not to hear about the promotion, STOP READING until July 10th, or UNSUBSCRIBE – there’s a link at the bottom of each bulk email sent out.
But unsubscribe and you might be missing out – for immediately after the Summer Sale, starting on Monday July 10th, we begin our Summer Series.
“What’s that?” newbies may be thing?
Well, children, because it’s really hot in the summer where I live, and because maybe holidays and stuff, I organise in advance THIRTY FREE ‘EXERCISES’, then publish them one at a time, so erm, three times a week, from the second week of July until the middle of September.
As with the EasyItalianNews.com bulletins, they’re not strictly ‘exercises’, more texts with audio, so free study materials which are designed to get students of Italian reading, listening and generally improving their Italian (vocabulary! grammar! cultural knowledge!)
The previous three years’ Summer Series can be found on our History page, so ninety-odd pages, each with online audio. We’ll take you from the mystic origins of the Roman Empire all the way to Itay’s cloak-wearing, gun-toting version of Che Guevara: Garibaldi, the ‘hero of two worlds’, hurrah!
Scroll down past the nineteenth century’s rebel poster boy and you’ll see what we have planned for this summer. Basically that’s a few years of glory, followed by decades of unfortunate events that Italians would rather forget but which tend to feature in high-school history classes elsewhere in Europe.
I once asked my wife/kids how come I knew more about twentieth century Italian history than they did (from when I was a young teenager in Britain), and was told that at each level in the Italian education system (elementare, media, superiore) history classes start from ‘the beginning’ (ancient civilisations that you and I have never heard of) then work through ‘history’ chronologically, week by week, year by year, with pupils supposed to memorise everything, and teachers wasting vast amounts of time testing them (orally, one at a time, while the other kids look out the window) to see that they do.
And given that some teachers go sick, or on strike, or sit idly looking at their smartphone while pupils memorise things in silence (Italian state-school teachers effectively have a job for life, with zero discipline or quality control), the convenient result is that the history that gets memorised is the uncontroversial part, from the ancient civilisations to the glories of the ‘risorgimento’ (Italy’s independence – see this summer’s series).
The work of memorising everything from pre-history to the late nineteenth century, and testing kids to destruction, so as to have a basis for the pass/fail grade entered in the end of year ‘pagella’, is usually completed just in time for the end of the summer semester.
But whoops! We seem to have skipped the twentieth century again! So much for colonialism, fascism, and two disastrous world wars! Blame the syllabus designers! Though if you ask me, that was precisely what they intended… 20th century Italian history is controversial. But, boy, are we going to revel in that this summer (and next)!
So where was I?
Ah yes, the Summer Sale and the Coupon Code, which I’ll be sending out on Monday next, UNLESS YOU’RE AN EXISTING OR FORMER STUDENT, in which case you might have had it yesterday, and if not yesterday, then today.
We send the coupon code in advance to those who do one-to-one lessons with our teachers because, basically, many of them use the 20% coupon to stock up on lesson credits to get them through the next 13 weeks or so, thereby saving money.
The admin for processing their orders takes our team just minutes, and it’s good to get it out of the way before the sale ‘proper’ begins, so as to lighten our load next week.
But the real reason is that, when existing or former students renew, they usually have a specific teacher in mind – either one they wish to continue with, or occasionally someone they’d like a change from.
Given that teacher availability is always limited, especially for trusted staff who’ve been with us for years, this is how we try to keep everyone happy. Need more lesson credits? Want to stay with, or avoid, teacher X? Then sign up, at a great discount, NOW, before we open it up to the hoi polloi, and we’ll do our best.
If you’re an existing or former student, and don’t recall getting an email from the teaching admin team, please check your spam (yesterday, today).
Then, if nothing, feel free to contact the teaching admin team. I won’t publish their email here, as they only deal with existing/former students, not would-be students, and they’re busy enough already.
But write to the people who organised/organise your lessons and they will make sure you are sent the coupon code in advance. Worst case scenario – if you can’t find their email – write to me and I can fix things.
By the way, since yesterday we’ve had repeat lesson orders from twenty-four, presumably-happy, online students. Which is not bad in just one day.
But the truly amazing thing is…
… no one has forgotten to use the coupon code!!!
So far.
A lunedì.
P.S.
Did you read/listen to Thursday’s bulletin of ‘easy’ Italian news?
It’s free, as is subscribing to receive each of the three weekly bulletins, directly to your email inbox, immediately they are published on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays.
Do that now and you’ll be good for tomorrow’s (Saturday’s) bulletin.
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OnlineItalianClub.com | EasyItalianNews.com | EasyReaders.org (ebooks) | NativeSpeakerTeachers.com (1-1 lessons)