2025 Spring Sale: How to ‘manage’ an Italian conversation lesson?

Buondì.

(As we’re busy with the 2025 Spring Sale right now, here’s an article from our archive. For details of the promotion, scroll down.)

A while back, faithful ebook reviewer Felice (I know that’s not his real name, but isn’t it a cool choice of pen name?) asked for ‘tips on managing conversation lessons’.

Given that it’s ‘20% off’ week at our online lessons store (see below for details), I thought this would be a good time to answer him.

OK, so I remember teaching my first conversation lesson, which would have been in Ankara, capital of Türkiye, back in about 1991.

I was a newly-minted English language teacher, and had been working my butt off for months trying to learn the basics of my trade, blissfully unaware that it takes many years, ideally decades.

Getting the basics of English grammar into the heads of enthusiastic young Turks should have been easy enough, but wasn’t, due to what I know now to be the significant differences between the students’ own language and the one they’re trying to acquire.

Decades later I had the same problem trying to teach Italians. And club members will recognise the issue in their own learning, I’m sure, given how different Italian is from English (think gender of nouns, tenses, prepositions, etc.)

So when my Ankara boss suggested that, instead of a Saturday morning grammar lesson, I take on a conversation class, with a small group of students who were further along and needed to practice speaking, I jumped at the chance. Easy peasy, I thought, no grammar!

To my utmost surprise, attempts at conversation with my small class of maybe just three or four people fell COMPLETELY FLAT. It was the most unsuccessful, almost traumatic, few hours of ‘teaching’ in my fledgling career. And I had no idea why.

Fast forward a few years and I was ‘teaching’ classes of Japanese kids in a residential school in Britain, which turned out to be the weirdest thing! The kids themselves were nice enough, and I learnt to score table tennis matches in Japanese, which was fun.

But the ‘social dynamics’ (if that’s a term) of children interacting with an adult teacher in a language classroom in a foreign country were utterly screwed up by their experience of education back home.

You do not volunteer information in a Japanese classroom (no ‘hands up if you know’), and if you understand what’s good for you, you will make every effort not to stand out, so as not to draw attention or make the other kids look bad.

I was supposed to be getting them to speak English, yet their culture dicatated that – while it was OK to chat, yell and exchange insults over a table tennis match – in the classroom pupils should stay stum at all times, or disaster would follow.

Later that year I figured out a solution. “THIS IS A TEST”, I would yell, stern-faced.

“I AM GOING TO ASK YOU A QUESTION! AND YOU MUST RESPOND! OR FAIL THE COURSE!”

I’d start slow with “WHAT IS YOUR NAME?”, as if I were a cop asking for I.D., “HOW OLD ARE YOU?”, and so on.

Then – once the class had figured out that they had nothing much to worry about – I’d start with the more ‘conversational’ topics, such as “WHERE DO YOU LIVE IN JAPAN?”, “WHAT’S YOUR FAVOURITE FOOD?”, “WHAT DID YOU DO AT THE WEEKEND?”, “DO YOU LIKE LEARNING ENGLISH?” and so on.

As long was it ‘test format’, and not so hard that anyone would be shown up in front of their friends, then miracles would happen. The kids could actually speak!

Several decades later we opened our own language school, first English, now just Italian, and years after that we began, in our turn, to offer conversation ‘lessons’, so went through the whole learning curve once again.

First, the teacher had to be friendly, and actually WANT to interact. But not too much, that was the biggest risk. There’s nothing worse than a ‘conversation’ lesson in which only the teacher speaks.

But – the teacher would protest at my feedback – the students enjoyed it! They loved hearing about my holiday in Peru. And probably he was right, but not as much as the teacher enjoyed telling them, and – the critical point – the students DIDN’T SAY MUCH.

Later I learnt to train teachers to do conversation lessons.

Imagine you’re Oprah Winfrey, I’d tell them. You’re super famous and have all these interesting or also-super-famous guests on your show today.

But you’ll only earn your living if the advertisers are happy. And the advertisers will only be happy if lots of people tune in to watch your show. And people only will if today someone they love or hate is on it.

Your JOB then, Oprah, is to get your fascinating guests to speak from their hearts, to get them to reveal their inner-selves, to confess their secrets, just as if they were sitting in the viewers’ own homes, having a chat over a beer and a bowl of chips. While saying as little as possible yourself.

This evening we have Brad Pitt and Jenifer Aniston! Brad, so how are things going with you two? We’ve read some stuff in the papers… How do you feel about that?

And you, Jenifer? That must have been so upsetting?

And now, tonight’s other special guest. Come over here, Tom Cruise! Welcome to the show! Well you’d certainly know a thing or two about media intrusion, Tom, isn’t that right?

In a classroom setting, the conversation ‘teacher’s’ job is just the same as Oprah’s – to give each guest a chance to speak, to say whatever’s on their agenda, to say at least something, and ideally to respond to what others are saying.

Five or seven years ago, I started learning Swedish (as a challenge, for club members) and eventually had to concede that Duolingo and so on were’t helping me learn to speak, like at all. I needed someone to practice with!

So I had a series of online teachers, some of whom (by far the most useful, fun ones) weren’t teachers at all. As a consequence, I learnt to discern, and to manage.

The simplest and shortest way to explain this is with a metaphor. Imagine you’re dating, that’s to say, meeting up, one-to-one, with a series of people who might be fun to spend time with.

What makes you feel good on a date? It’s probably not the food, right? The company is the thing that matters, enjoying yourself being with the other person, feeling listened to, feeling ‘heard’, feeling as if the other person would sit there all evening with you, and that would be fine.

Plus, the other person has interesting things to contribute, stuff you can go home and relate to your flatmate. He’s a brain surgeon, but not boring! And has very clean hands, too.

What about on a bad date? Oh dear… Your beau only talks about themselves, doesn’t ask questions about you. Honestly? You’d rather be home watching a TV series, and can’t wait for the evening to end.

What you’re aiming for in a conversation lesson is similar to what you’d be aiming for on a date – that you’re both having a good time, that both parties would be good with meeting up again, and soon!

IMPORTANT NOTE: I’ve written about ‘teaching’ conversation classes, less about taking them as a student, which I assume would be the case for most people reading this..

But teachers ‘teach’, it’s the nature of the beast. And having a good time on a date is not the same as ‘teaching’ or ‘being taught’, right?

So if the teacher insists on ‘teaching’, then you, the student, need to get things back on the right track, so as to prioritize what’s important, that’s to say, you getting used to INTERACTING, NATURALLY, WITH A NATIVE SPEAKER!

And the simplest way to do that is to ‘manage’, as Felice put it, the conversation yourself. You, student, be Oprah!

Treat your teacher as the chat-show guest. Show an interest in them, value them, cherish them, keep asking questions!

Until – and this will happen, I promise you – they will feel so loved up that, in fact, they can now spare some time to reciprocate (what they really should have been doing all along), and so start to ask you questions back.

At which point, SHARE. It’s how natural conversations happen. You talk, I talk, we take turns, we negotiate topics, we cooperate in having a good ‘date’ (or we don’t.)

Next lesson? Refer back: how’s your mum doing? Did you get the car fixed? What’s the weather like there? Basically, just like in real life.

And SHARE some more: my kids are coming back from England today, so I’ll need to cook. Bug’s got a cold, but he’s learnt to nod and shake his head. You probably saw on the meteo, it’s colder than usual for September, here in Bologna. What’s it like there?

If you want to speak Italian, and understand when others speak it to you, then priority no.1 is to INTERACT regularly.

And that’s a heck of a lot easier if you have some friendly soul that you know, who knows you, too, and for whom it’s not great sacrifice to chat for half an hour or so, once a week maybe.

I have to rush, as I have a Swedish conversation lesson at noon. Before then I’ll be going for a walk and listening to Swedish radio on my earbuds. Given that I only speak the language once a week, I find that listening beforehand helps my brain warm up and tune in.

Talking of which, last night Stefi went out to a boring meeting, leaving Bug and I to put ourselves to bed, after a suitable stretch of TV.

His current favourites are the Swedish animated characters, Babblarna. Yes, I know you’ve never heard of them.

And I know you’d don’t give a fig about learning Swedish. But listen to this link, all the way through if you’ve time, to see why Bug and I like it.

It’s an excellent example of how you don’t neeed to understand everything, but will always understand something, even in a language you know nothing of.

If listening to Swedish lullabies is too scary, just look. Watch out for whose eyes will start to close next. It’s fun!

Then, when you’re done with Babblarna, go find something to listen to in Italian, which should be easier now, right?

Or better still, find someone to interact with. Go find an Italian ‘friend’ (paying someone is the easiest way…)

A presto!

2025 Spring Sale This Week: Save 20% On Online Lessons

Students of Italian (but also French, Spanish and German) might like to know that the NativeSpeakerTeachers.com 2025 Spring Sale is running this week!

Use coupon code

2025-Spring-Sale-20%-Off

to save 20% on Italian, French, German and Spanish lessons, so conversation, grammar, help with pronunciation, whatever you need to progress with the language you’re learning!

All you have to do to discount the price of lesson credits by 20% is to copy and paste

2025-Spring-Sale-20%-Off

into the box in your shopping cart. Once pasted, press the ‘Apply coupon’ button and – this is important – SCROLL DOWN to check the cart TOTAL is reduced.

The prices of individual items don’t change, which can make you think that the coupon code hasn’t had any effect…

Have a go, just to see how it works:

1. Select, for example, a pack of online lessons with a native speaker teacher. Press the ‘Add to cart’ button below the product image to, well, add it to your cart. Or click on the image to read more, then look for the black ‘Add to cart’ button on the product page.
2. View the contents of your cart at any point by clicking on ‘Cart‘, or on the shopping basket icon at the top right-hand side.
3. See your selection, ready to be bought? But at the full price… So, where’s that pesky coupon code? Ah! Here it is: 2025-Spring-Sale-20%-Off
4. Control + C to copy it, Control + V to paste it into the box where it says ‘Apply coupon’ (on a Mac, use Command + C, Command + V, on a smartphone or tablet – I have no idea – ask a child…)
5. Press the ‘Apply coupon’ button and scroll down to check the total has been discounted
6. Magic! It worked. Now, were this a real purchase, rather than a practice run, you’d then press the ‘Proceed to checkout’ button and do the usual online shopping stuff.
7. But as we’re just playing, have a go at removing your test purchase from the cart. There’s a little red X to the left of the product image (in the cart). Click it and whatever you no longer desire will be removed.

Beh, yes, I admit – it all sounds rather a palaver.

Actually, though, it’s much easier and faster to DO than to describe in writing, I promise.

So, for real now – the coupon code ( 2025-Spring-Sale-20%-Off ) will work on anything/everything you see on the home page of the online lessons store.

Offer Details

• This promotion ends at midnight on Sunday April 13th 2025, after which the coupon code will no longer be valid
• The next offer won’t be until July, so stock up now…
• You can use coupon code 2025-Spring-Sale-20%-Off as often as you wish until the night of Sunday April 13th 2025
• The coupon code ( 2025-Spring-Sale-20%-Off ) won’t work with other coupon codes – choose one!

What, then, should you consider buying?

The ten-pack of online Italian lessons, now £200 for ten thirty-minute sessions, is a steal once discounted by 20%.

Use the coupon code on that one and you’ll be paying just £16.00 a lesson, that’s £32.00 an hour. Go ask at a ‘proper’ language school how much an hour’s lesson would cost you (but beware, because at many places you pay for an hour but actually get just 45 minutes…)

Our regular online students wait for the offers (around Easter, during the first week of July, at the end of September, and at New Year) to stock up with enough lesson credits to get them through until the next promotion, several months later.

That way they can take one or more lessons each week while never paying the full price.

Furbo, huh?

Here’s that coupon code again:

2025-Spring-Sale-20%-Off

Have fun making your selections: Online Italian/French/Spanish/German lessons