Saying your first few words in a foreign language can be terrifying. The fear of making mistakes, of not understanding, of embarrassment, may be truly paralysing. No one wants to look an idiot, especially in front of strangers. So, how to feel less nervous about speaking Italian?
Here’s an article about learning Italian that might interest you
Just a quickie today. I’ve published an article this morning on our sponsor school’s website that I thought might interest you. It’s about the psychological challenges of taking language classes taught only in that language. And about quality of teaching, or lack of it. Italian lessons IN Italian? How does that work then? If you’ve […]
Why Google won’t show your ideal Italian language school
Looking for a really good Italian language school? The one that’s perfect for what you want? These days, the first thing that any of us does when searching for information is to type what we’re after into Google. There ARE other search engines (bing.com, duckduckgo.com, yahoo.com), but the vast majority of people use Google. However, […]
How to learn Italian without boring yourself to death
In a word, variety. Any one thing, done repeatedly for long enough, is likely to get tedious. And if you’re not interested any more, or not as interested as you were, your motivation will start to flag. What’s more, if you’re going to learn Italian to a good level, you’ll need to think medium-long term. […]
Great-grandma’s piadina receipe (and Italian listening practice!)
When I see my Romagnoli in-laws they’ll often proudly present me with plastic bag of frozen piadine and crescioni, a traditional local food made for them by the widow who lives downstairs. Don’t know what my father-in-law does for her, but she’s certainly very grateful. As am I. Piadine and Crescioni are not the sort […]
Three for the price of two
No, I’m not talking about the -30% offer on e-books in our shop (not this time, at least.) But about this useful exercise on compound words in Italian. ‘asciugare’ (to dry) + ‘mano’ (hand) = l’asciugamano (towel) See? Three words for the price of two!
Perfect your Italian prepositions
For those of you in the USA, Happy Thanksgiving! (For those of you in Australia, G’day!) May I suggest we give thanks that we’re not pupils at an Italian elementary school? Why? ‘Cos the poor kids get regularly blasted with Italian grammar, that’s why. I didn’t know what a preposition was until (shortly after) I became […]
Easy Italian verbs, harder Italian expressions
Venire, andare, fare, prendere, parlare… To come, to go, to do, to take, to speak. Takes me back a bit, to circa 1997, when I’d fallen in love with an Italian girl and started out memorizing verbs, shuffling flash cards on my London bus ride home from work each evening. And dreaming of a new […]
“Sex change” words in Italian
That got your attention, didn’t it? But seriously, check out these “gender-bender” Italian words, which can be both masculine and feminine, but with different meanings. Reading through the list, I realise how many of these I regularly get wrong myself. Sometimes then ending is different, which helps: il collo (neck) but la colla (glue) Other times, […]
Mica difficult
If you’re reading this article, you’re probably on the OnlineItalianClub.com mailing list, or someone you know is. You may also be a member of our club, though the two things are not the same. (It’s possible to sign up to receive articles from me by e-mail, but not join our club, and vice versa). It’s […]