For Anne from Chicago, my favorite email correspondent, who wrote to suggest that, as my articles were sometimes so long, it would be helpful if I stated clearly at the beginning what they were about, to save her the time it took to read them. And for my mother, bless her, who couldn’t see the […]

It’s been a while since I had a good rant. Hasn’t it? So OK, just to clear up a few things: A ‘book’ is commonly held to be a collection of pages with type or pictures on them, held together in a permanent binder. The pages are made of paper, which is itself usually made […]

Buondì. Guess what I spent the morning doing? Not writing this, obviously, as it’s nearly one p.m. (Italian time) and I’m just beginning. Nor taking an online lesson, no such luck. No indeedy – in fact, I spent about three hours sending emails to many of the people who’ve bought ebooks in the last month […]

Buondì. Below is an email I had this week from Kudzai, which he (or she, not sure which – Wikipedia mentions a Zimbabwean cricketer but it’s probably not him) would like me to share with you: Ciao Daniel, I was thinking of writing this message in Italian, however I was hoping that maybe other people could […]

Buondì. Two things came out of Monday’s article ‘The Joy of Not Understanding!‘ The first was that a club member in Sweden volunteered to practice Swedish with me in exchange for Italian lessons (with a club teacher, that is, not with me  personally- I don’t teach Italian as I have an awful English accent and […]

I am by nature a contrary person, but bear with me. So I was listening to a Turkish radio channel on Saturday evening. The program was for the youth audience but, though I’m long past my teens, I stuck with it because I like Turkish music. It makes me want to dance, which is surprising […]

Buondì. They say there’s no such thing as a stupid question, which is something that, as a teacher (and a marketer), I firmly believe. However, there’s such a thing as taking reasonable care before asking… For example, in the FAQ of our online shop, there’s loads of useful information, organised around the most common issues […]

Buondì. I’ve been writing a lot about listening and speaking lately. That’s for two reasons: a.) Everyone wants to be able to SPEAK the language they’re studying and b.) Speaking on it’s own isn’t much use if you can’t actually understand the replies I take regular online lessons to practice speaking the languages I’m sort […]

Buondì. I get a lot of emails from club members. Fortunately, I once invested a few pennies in a second-hand ‘teach yourself touch-typing’ book, so replying isn’t that onerous… In fact it can be interesting, and a pleasant distraction from ‘real’ work. Below are some emails that came in after Wednesday’s article ‘Listening Comprehension, Lesson […]