Buondì.
Progress with this week’s Reading Challenge?
For me, that was to read a chapter a day of both the French and Spanish versions of our eBook of the Week (see the P.S. below for details.)
Well… I ‘crashed and burned’, as they say in the classic fighter-pilot-training-school movie, ‘Top Gun’, to describe a humiliating public failure. For example, Tom Cruise not managing to seduce the lovely Kelly McGillis in a bar.
But, unlike Tom, who did rather overreach himself in that scene, I have a good excuse. It’s family-stuff, so I can’t go into details, but it means my available learning time has suddenly been rather drastically curtailed.
We make all these plans, don’t we? And then, boom!
And it never rains but it pours! All the unexpected extra demands on my time seemed to have coincided, you probably know the feeling.
So the work/learning activities I usually manage with aplomb simply haven’t gotten done.
Oh well.
Maybe I’ll catch up today (it’s not likely), or over the weekend, as some sort of ‘new normal’ begins to establish itself ‘chez nous’.
Or possibly I won’t. But I can still hope that you guys are getting on better than I am!
Lots of people have downloaded our FREE easy reader, lately. Il ristorante is intentionally absurdly short, basically a paragraph or so of very basic Italian per chapter, of which there are eight.
So there’s absolutely no reason why people shouldn’t manage to get through it, and so begin to establish the habit of reading/listening to Italian. Or to French, German or Spanish, given that the same story is localised into those languages too, and is also available FREE!
Così, writing this, I’ve come away with a new determination to catch up on Wednesday and Thursday’s chapters. Tom did manage to seduce Kelly in the end. It just took him longer than he’d initially expected.
A lunedì, allora.
P.S.
Here’s a ‘heads up’ about this week’s half-price ‘eBook’ of the week, which is available in Italian, of course, but for the language enthusiasts amongst you, also in French, Spanish and German. The level is A1/2, so Elementary to Pre-Intermediate.
If that one’s too easy for you, check out the full range of ebooks, in all those languages, on the Catalog page of our online shop.
What I would do, if I were in the market for study materials, would be to run down through the sections of the Catalog page pertaining to the language or languages I’m learning, and download the FREE sample chapters for the titles that interested me, testing them out to see if 1.) the first chapter ‘grabbed me’ – there’s nothing worse than boring study material, and 2.) the level was just right, that is to say, like Goldilocks’ porridge – not to hot/hard or cold/easy.
And then I might buy one! But just the one, to see how I got on, rather than, say, splash out on a bunch of stuff I might never get around to using, and so not profit from and feel bad about. That’s called ‘buyer’s remorse’, by the way. Around here, we discourage it… we want you to LEARN, not just to buy stuff.
N.b. Honesty also compels me to mention that the week after next, starting on Monday 22nd of March, we’ll be having our Spring Sale, which means making available a 20% coupon code that will discount EVERYTHING in our online shop by a fifth.
You have been told. Hold off on your purchases for another ten days or so and save £££!
P.P.S.
And a further reminder – Thursday’s FREE bulletin of ‘easy’ Italian news is ready for your to read/listen to it. Click here.