A club member wrote to me on Wednesday, after receiving that day’s email with the link to the free material. It was a fairly advanced listening task, you might remember. Anyway, it was too hard for her, so she wondered if she could change level and receive something more appropriate. A good question, and one […]

Ciao from Louisiana, which we’ll be leaving this morning to drive back to Texas. Eight to ten hours on the interstate, depending on traffic. Che bello! Thursday evening, we fly out from Dallas-Fort Worth to London Heathrow, then the final leg to Bologna, where I’m hoping there’ll be a glass of wine and a plate […]

This morning I’m in Louisiana. New Orleans to be precise – scroll down to read more about that. Or, get straight on with an advanced Italian listening exercise, with transcript and task to help you out. The topic is il sistema scolastico italiano (the school system). Note the irregular gender in ‘sistema’ – it ends […]

Buondì. Today’s free Italian listening (with transcript and NEW task) is on the “Si impersonale“. Click here to go right to it. The grammar is pretty self-explanatory, being similar in meaning to the English passive form. The listening itself is quite hard though, so don’t beat yourself up if you don’t understand that much at […]

Today’s free Italian listening, with comprehension task and transcript, is on ‘dreams’. As in what you want to do in the future. For me, that would be a hot shower and some cold beer. Holidays can be tiring, don’t you think? If you’d like to get right on with studying Italian, rather than hearing about […]

For anyone impatient with hearing about my holiday, today’s free Italian listening (with transcript and new task) is on ‘Le Regole da rispettare ad un esame’ (exam rules to respect). But if you ever have to actually DO an exam in Italy, feel free to ignore them completely – everyone else will. As a teacher […]

If you’re learning Italian, or any foreign language, you’ll no doubt be familiar with the experience of confusing two words that, at least to you, look or sound similar. For example, when I’m speaking Italian I tend to confuse the word scorciatoia (short cut) with the word scoiattolo (the tree-dwelling rodent). Why am I telling […]

I’m waking up today in a different time zone. My eldest and I are in Texas, USA, and so seven hours behind Italian time. Everything here is big, just like they say. Malls and fast foods (lots of parking), the pickup trucks. But also very neat. Tidy. Well-organised. Pretty, even. Unlike what they say, the […]

Buondì. Here’s the final article from Italy, for a while at least. As mentioned the other day, from Wednesday I’ll be in Texas, USA taking a road trip with my eldest daughter, whose birthday present this is. I assume there’ll be WiFi, so things should proceed more or less as normal, apart from observations about […]

What’s the longest river in Italy? Every Italian school child knows this one, I’m sure. But if you don’t, I’ll give you a clue. Remember that children’s story about a teddy-bear, who lives in Hundred Acre Wood, along with various other improbable forms of wildlife: a donkey, a family of kangaroos, a piglet, a tiger […]