Born between 1925 and 1945? This could have been you!

Buondì.

Before today’s topic, a message for people who took up the offer –  at NativeSpeakerTeachers.com –  of a free trial lesson (the promotion ended last night), and think that I’m the person to bug when they have issues.

Orders are dealt with promptly by the teaching admin team, which means that they write to new students asking about their needs and when they are available to study. It’s an email, not a letter, and they’ll be waiting for your reply, so they can organise the free trial lesson according to your preferences.

If they don’t get a reply, they wait a few days and then send a follow up. And if they still don’t get a reply, they assume you’re no longer interested, so leave you in peace.

The problem comes when people don’t read their emails, or worse, don’t check the spam/junk folders of their email accounts, and so assume that the teaching admin team has not made any effort to contact them, then write to me.

Of course, I check that they have in fact been contacted, and I reply suggesting they check their spam/junk folder. At times, my response also goes to spam/junk, or is otherwise ignored.

Days later, the same person writes again, by now rather irate.

Ma ragazzi, have you forgotten the basics of modern communication, Lesson #1? If you’re expecting an email, if you’ve been PROMISED an email, and yet you don’t seee it in your email inbox, CHECK YOUR SPAM/JUNK folder!

Lesson #2 – if you’re using an infernal Apple device, and you check your spam/junk folder (in whichever email app you have chosen to use on said infernal device), if, if, if it shows you no spam whatsoever, this likely means that plenty of spam exists but your device has decided, without telling you, not to bother you by downloading it onto your chic item of mobile technology.

A spam/junk folder with ZERO messages in it does not mean that you are a clean-living innocent of no interest to fraudsters, but that something is blocking or deleting incoming messages…

What I’m saying here, very patiently, is that you may not be seeing emails that you want to see because you are not looking in the right place, or have failed to understand that your device is trying to save you data charges by not downloading emails it thinks you won’t want to see.

Either way, there’s absolutely nothing I can do about it from where I am. So please, get a grip, huh?

Anyway, over the weekend, I watched an Italian movie (details below), which was basically about beautiful people partying hard – bikinis, cocktails, dancing, chic restaurants, open top cars, and so on.

If you were born between 1925 and 1945, you may have been there, one of the happy folk enjoying everything ‘sixties Rome had to offer. Some of the dancers reminded me of black and white photos displayed at my in-laws’ place, party people that they were, back in the day.

The film was released in 1965, two years before I was born, so I missed all the fun (we had punk, then Thatcher…) But I’m sure at least a percentage of club members will remember hopping into a friend’s ‘spider‘ of an evening, and heading out to a place in the cool hills, there to dance until dawn.

Sounds fun? The movie is ‘Io la conoscevo bene’ (I Knew Her Well). and you can find all one hour and fifty-five minutes of it on YouTube, here.

It’s in Italian, of course, and there are no English subtitles. If you press the CC icon (‘closed captions’) you can see automatically-generated text, but it’s AWFUL, so you might be better off not bothering.

The movie is quite visual in any case, so watchable even if you don’t understand a single word. Why not give that a try? You might be surprised how little the audio really matters.

And/or, you could grab yourself a copy of our newly-published ‘eBook of the classic Italian Movie’, and read/listen to it before you tackle the film. The details are below.

It helps. Well, it helped me, anyway.

A mercoledì!

Io la conoscevo bene

Antonio Pietrangeli’s 1965 movie, ‘Io la conoscevo bene’, features Stefania Sandrelli as beautiful Adriana, an aspiring movie star who’s looking for something more than just a career on the screen…

Giovanni Galavotti’s re-telling of the story of the film for learners of Italian makes a great introduction before watching the movie itself (ideally in Italian!) Or it can be used simply as supplementary reading/listening material, guaranteed to liven up any study program!

• .pdf e-book (+ audio available free online)
• .mobi (Kindle-compatible) and .epub (other ebook readers) available on request at no extra charge – just add a note to the order form or email us
• 8 chapters to read and listen to
• Comprehension questions to check your understanding
• Italian/English glossary of ‘difficult’ terms for the level
• Suitable for students at B1 level and above
• Download your Free Sample Chapter (.pdf)

Buy Io la conoscevo bene just £5.99 | FREE sample chapter (.pdf) | eBook of the Movie (1) | eBook of the Movie (2) | eBook Catalog

How do I access my ebook?

When your order is ‘completed’ (normally immediately after your payment), a download link will be automatically emailed to you. It’s valid for 7 days and 3 download attempts so please save a copy of the .pdf ebook in a safe place. Other versions of the ebook, where available, cannot be downloaded but will be emailed to people who request them. There’s a space to do that on the order form – where it says Additional information, Order notes (optional). If you forget, or if you have problems downloading the .pdf, don’t worry! Email us at the address on the website and we’ll help. Also, why not check out our FAQ?

P.S.

You won’t forget to read/listen to Saturday’s bulletin of ‘easy’ Italian news, will you?

(I haven’t yet, but I plan to, today!)

It’s FREE, as is subscribing, and so getting each thrice-weekly bulletin (text + online audio) directly in your email inbox, each Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday.

Tomorrow is Tuesday…

Subscribe here

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