Buondì.
I’m in a hurry today as I’ve promised to drop the kids off in St. Ives.
We’d stop there ourselves for the day, but I’m told parking’s a nightmare, so we’ve decided to leave the teenagers to their own devices and head for Penzance, over on the other coast.
I read somewhere that Penzance had become Britain’s first ‘single-use-plastic-free’ town, in which case, bravi to them!
I’ll test that out by asking for a plastic bag to put my lunchtime pasties in…
So anyway, today’s free material for learning Italian is a follow-up to Monday’s (‘Passato e futuro’), that is to say, an audio recording + transcript on the same topic but with a different interviewee.
The more listening practice you get, the better. But variety is important, to get you used to different ways of speaking and thus prepare you more effectively for real interactions.
Ready? Here you go, then. The second part – different speaker, different style, different accent:
You could listen to both, in fact, and see if you can note the accents…
And do the same with the other audios/transcripts in this series, which can be found on our ‘New’ page.
Remember, the more listening you do, the better your comprehension will eventually become.
And they’re free, so what’s to lose?
As I mentioned on Monday, the interviewer in the audio takes her questions from this set of free conversation prompts: ‘Il passato e il futuro’.
So once you’ve done the listening practice, and studied the transcript, why not practice speaking, too?
Grab a fellow student from your Italian class, or book a lesson with an online Italian teacher.
There are conversation prompts on various topics here. Enough for LOTS of speaking practice!
‘Book of the Week’ Reminder!
Thanks to the many people who have supported the club with their purchases of this week’s half-price Italian easy reader Il giocoliere.
We’ve also sold a few copies of the same story localised into French, Spanish and German! If you’d be interested in the half-price deal also in one of those languages, see this post for details and links.
The ‘Book of the Week’ offer ends on Sunday night. Here are details:
“A student has her purse stolen on a crowded bus in Bologna. It contains little of value, except a photograph which is precious to her…”
- .pdf e-book (+ audio available free online at soundcloud.com)
- 8 chapters to read and listen to
- Normal price £7.99, this week just £3.99!
- Comprehension questions to check your understanding
- Italian/English glossary of ‘difficult’ terms for the level
- Suitable for students at any level
- Download your Free Sample Chapter (.pdf)
- N.b. Your e-book will be emailed to you within 24 hours of your purchase
And here are the links again:
Buy ‘Il giocoliere’ | Free sample chapter (.pdf) | Catalogue
P.S.
Thanks to Wikipedia for reminding me of the nursery rhyme, part of which forms the title of this article:
As I was going to St. Ives,
I met a man with seven wives,
Each wife had seven sacks,
Each sack had seven cats,
Each cat had seven kits:
Kits, cats, sacks, and wives,
How many were there going to St. Ives?
If anyone fancies localising that into Italian (obviously, you’d change the destination as well as the language and anything else that pleases you), feel free to give it a try!
Post your efforts as a comment on this article for everyone to see, or email them to me so I can share them on Friday.
A venerdì, allora.