Buondì. Over 500 people have already listened to Wednesday’s new audio. Well done to you guys! But the other nine-thousand five-hundred of you? Avanti, ragazzi! Don’t fall behind. The more listening you do, the better. Time and effort are required to develop the neural networks needed for processing speech. It’s not just some magic process […]

Buondì. First things first. Here’s the second in our new series of ‘Native-speaker conversations with transcripts’ for you. This one was recorded by my giggly daughter and her extremely-polite boyfriend (he called me ‘Sir’ at first…) Tu e la tecnologia It’s about, well, ‘You and technology’. Have a listen, it’s free, so what’s to lose? The […]

Buondì. Tomorrow we leave for Sweden. So today I’ve lots to do, packing and so on, and leaving the house in order so that the kids can trash it while we’re away. I’ll be brief then. Below is a new audio recording and a transcript. You’ll also find some guidance regarding how I think you […]

Buondi. Today I have the last from our ‘expressions with’ series (next week we’ll start something different…) And this time it’s Expressions with ‘casa’. For example ‘una casa chiusa’. Now what could that be? Some sort of youth institution, a sort of juvenile prison? Oh, I know! If you’ve been to Italy and looked at […]

Buondì. I get lots of emails from OnlineItalianClub.com members, much of it complimentary: “Great site!”, “Thanks so much for your wonderful emails”, and so on. One rather rude lady this week told me to please shut up about learning Swedish as no one was interested. An hour later, someone from Sweden wrote to wish me […]

It’s the last week of school, in more ways than one! Two of my three kids finish on Thursday and will no doubt spend the next three and a half months slumped in front of Netflix, if not otherwise engaged perfecting their Playstation skills (him) or varnishing their nails (her, or if they get really […]

Buondì. I’m writing this yesterday, if you see what I mean, as this morning we’re off for a weekend at the coast. We’ll be filling up on my Swedish mother-in-law’s pasta, relaxing in the sunshine, and hopefully getting out on the boat, perhaps for the first swim of the year! Why all the fun? Well […]

Buondì. First today, I have a favour to ask of anyone doing online Italian lessons, either with the club or with a competitor. Actually, it’s Martina who’s asking the favour. I just agreed to pass it on to you. This is what she wrote: Mi chiamo Martina Burlando e sono una studentessa universitaria di lingue […]

Buondì. When is a ‘porta’ a door, and when is it a gate? (And does it matter?) Bologna, where I live, used to be surrounded by a defensive wall, much of which has now been demolished. In olden times you’d only have been able to enter the city through one of the many fortified ‘gates’ […]

No, that’s not a mistake. I’m aware it’s the end of May, not December. But I’ve just published another free Italian ‘conversation lesson’, and hey, why NOT talk about Natale e Capodanno in the summer?? After all, conversation practice is conversation practice, right? And if you want to speak better, chuck that grammar book in […]