First week of the Summer Series (and why you should care)

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Buondì.

Anyone interested in history and historical characters should check out the past four years’ free Summer Series on the club website (click the History tab in the menu of the club website), where you’ll find ONE HUNDRED AND TWENTY articles with online audio which take you through ‘La storia di Roma’, ‘Il Medioevo’, ‘Il Rinascimento’ and (last year) ‘Dal Risorgimento alla Seconda Guerra Mondiale’.

And – drum roll – this year’s free Summer Series has begun! It’ll cover the last fifty years or so of the (hi)story, from the end of WWII up to Berlusconi and the euro.

In previous years I was writing three articles like this one a week, so the Summer Series was a nice way to find the thirty or so topics I needed to tide me over the ten hot weeks from early July to mid-September. There was an article each Monday, Wednesday and Friday, along with a link to the latest exciting episode of Italian history.

This year, because of Bug, and general exhaustion, I’m down to just the one article a week, on Wednesdays, but will still be releasing three ‘episodi’, probably on the Monday. So, if summer is an idle time for you too (winter in the southern hemisphere, I haven’t forgotten), you’ll have plenty of Italian to keep you busy.

To find the new episodes, any time from Monday onwards each week, visit the club’s History page, scroll down to near the bottom – where it says ‘Dalla fine della Seconda Guerra Mondiale all’era di Berlusconi’ – and there, in red type are the live articles (the grey type ones are yet to be published.) Here’s a copy/paste, so you can see what that looks like:

Dalla fine della Seconda Guerra Mondiale all’era di Berlusconi

The thirty-two articles in this series will be published during the summer of 2024, probably three at a time, probably on Monday’s, starting on July 8th. To make sure you don’t miss anything, join our club (it’s free!)

• Episodio 1. Gli orrori della Seconda Guerra Mondiale in Italia
• Episodio 2. Lo sterminio degli Ebrei in Italia (1938-1945)
• Episodio 3. Gli italiani massacrati nelle foibe (1945-1946)
• Episodio 4. Il trattato di pace di Parigi e le condizioni per l’Italia (1947)
• Episodio 5. L’Italia diventa una Repubblica (1946)
• Episodio 6. Il cinema neorealista
• Episodio 7. Il Piano Marshall e la ripresa economica dell’Italia (1947)
• Episodio 8. La Guerra Fredda nel mondo e il centrismo in Italia
• Episodio 9. Il boom economico degli Anni ’50
• Episodio 10. La televisione italiana
• Episodio 11. Il monopolio della Rai e la lotta per la libertà di espressione dei canali indipendenti
• Episodio 12. La Vespa e la libertà di movimento per tutti
• Episodio 13. I bambini negli Anni ’60: baby boom, educazione e Carosello
• Episodio 14. L’ira della natura: la disastrosa frana del Vajont
• Episodio 15. Storia della FIAT
• Episodio 16. Una gigantesca impresa: l’Autostrada del Sole (1956-1964)
• Episodio 17. La Democrazia Cristiana di Aldo Moro si allea con i socialisti (1960-1970)
• Episodio 18. La vita degli operai e l’autunno caldo del 1969
• Episodio 19. Il terrorismo nero dei partiti neofascisti: le stragi (1968-1980)
• Episodio 20. Il terrorismo rosso: le Brigate Rosse
• Episodio 21. Il rapimento di Aldo Moro
• Episodio 22. Gli anni ’70 e ’80: i movimenti studenteschi, i figli dei fiori e la musica
• Episodio 23. La diffusione dell’eroina
• Episodio 24. Un nuovo personaggio sulla scena politica e il Pentapartito (1981-1991)
• Episodio 25. Il faticoso cammino verso una nuova mentalità (anni ’70 e ’80)
• Episodio 26. Luci e ombre nell’era di Craxi (1980-1990)
• Episodio 27. “Mani pulite” e la corruzione nella politica italiana
• Episodio 28. Le organizzazioni criminali mafiose
• Episodio 29. Il Maxiprocesso contro la Mafia (1992-1993)
• Episodio 30. Due eroi nazionali: Falcone e Borsellino
• Episodio 31. La fine del millennio in Italia: gli anni ’90 e l’entrata in politica di Silvio Berlusconi
• Episodio 32. Com’è iniziato il 2000? (2000-2010)

Some interesting stuff there, I think you’ll agree. Enjoy!

What? You’re NOT interested in history and historical characters?

Gift horses and mouths come immediately to mind, but no, maybe this needs spelling out…

In the last three or four decades I’ve met a lot of students, language learners, that’s to say people hoping/trying/aspiring to learn Italian, English, or other languages.

And several things became crystal clear to me. I’ll put them in what we website types call an ordered list, so you can hopefully see how one leads to the next:

1. Lots of people were exposed to foreign languages at school
2. School being school, most of them failed to learn much
3. But as adults they often feel they’d like to try again
4. What they remember from school was the grammar and lists of new words
5. That’s what they think is important, so that’s where they begin
6. And fail again
7. The occasional success stories have one thing in common
8. They tended to have some burning interest in reading, listening or speaking the language
9. For instance, the Harry Potter-generation of kids, some of whom were so desperate to find out what happened next that they’d plough through 800 pages of the original English, rather than wait for the Italian/Turkish/Spanish translation
10. Kids like that were soon so far ahead of the others in their school that there was no comparison
11. Some of them rapidly got better than their actual teachers. No one understood why
12. Adults too. Bologna – where I live – has many women from Eastern Europe, who speak Italian extremely well, often with no trace of an accent. Because their caring jobs require it, and because hanging out and chatting with frail old people, all day every day, promotes rapid learning
13. On the other hand, the students – whether child or adult – who found no INTRINSIC REASON to learn, didn’t
14. Learning, like crime, requires both ‘opportunity’ and ‘motive’

And what we are providing this summer – thirty two episodes of graded material for students of Italian – is ‘opportunity’.

Assuming you can find some ‘motive’, you cannot help but improve your Italian – IF you engage with the material, rather than putting it off until ‘after you’ve mastered the grammar’.

I challenge anyone to work through the whole series, from now until mid-September, then tell me it made no difference, that they derived no benefit from it whatsoever.

Of course, you could just as well find your ‘opportunity’ and ‘motive’ elsewhere.

Perhaps you’re more interested in soccer, knitting, cooking, or politics? Great! Off you go then, if you can find appropriate material to work with.

It’s the ones who’ll do nothing that won’t learn anything, simple as that.

And by the way, studying grammar, learning lists of vocabulary, etc. counts – in my book – as ‘doing nothing’.

Why?

Because ‘studying the basics first’ might be motivating for some people (not all), yet postpones the point at which you work on developing real-life language skills, so reading, listening, speaking and so on.

And many of the ‘grammar-first’ people never get to the point where they consider they have ‘enough’ of a language to begin USING it.

Also – and this is vital – reading and listening regularly (three episodes a week for ten weeks) provides CONTEXT for the learning processes that are running in your head as you (attempt to) follow the content.

Over an extended period you’re getting – through your eyes and ears – lots of sounds, lots of words, lots of phrases, lots of sentences, lots of topics.

Many of them overlap and so reinforce each other and/or the other learning that’s happening, for example as a result of taking a class or course.

The more you see/hear words, phrases, accents, structures, communicative acts, the more it all becomes familiar, and the more you will understand, and learn.

Così.

Most of us won’t be like the Harry Potter-obsessed Polish teenagers who learnt English as if by magic.

But by making sure a good chunk of our ‘learning time’ is devoted to reading and listening (speaking too, if you get the chance), we can be players, of whatever level, rather than spectators.

Know what a ‘foibe’ is, by the way? Don’t look it up.

There, right there, is an example of another reason why you should include masses and masses of reading/listening in your study program.

I call it ‘cultural knowledge’.

Read/listen to the first three episodes of the Summer Series without using a dictionary and you’ll know what a ‘foibe’ is, I guarantee it. If you can’t figure out the text itself, there happens to be a picture. And the audio will tell you what it should sound like.

Mention ‘foibe’ in conversation with an Italian and see what happens.

It’s like knowing the name of Dante’s true love – Italians do, virtually no one else cares. Knowing these things, and millions of other data points, is what makes Italians Italians, just as much as being able to conjugate verbs. More so, probably.

‘Cultural knowledge’ can be as simple as familiarity with the names of a country’s best soccer teams, or as in-depth as knowing the colloquial terms that Italians use to describe places, organisations and so on.

Quirinale, fiamme gialle, gli azzuri, are some examples. You could look them up if you wanted to, but much easier just to browse a daily newspaper. And guess a bit.

Gotta go, but give it a try (no dictionaries!)

Then come back in September to tell me you didn’t learn anything:

Episodio 1. Gli orrori della Seconda Guerra Mondiale in Italia

Episodio 2. Lo sterminio degli Ebrei in Italia (1938-1945)

Episodio 3. Gli italiani massacrati nelle foibe (1945-1946)

Alla prossima settimana!

eBook of the Week, ‘Uno, nessuno e centomila’ (B2), £4.99

This week’s half-price eBook of the Week offer is our B2 (upper-intermediate) -level version of Pirandello’s ‘Uno, nessuno e centomila‘.

We did this one as a mini-book-club back in May 2020, when most people were locked down, and because I was promoting our then-new Italian Literature series of ‘easy reader’ ebooks.

A group of us read the Italian original ‘together’. If you have time to kill and/or would like to tackle the original rather than our ‘easy reader’ version, read the commments in the mini-book-club. Scroll down to the bottom of that page to find them, in date order from oldest to newest.

And as regards our simplified version, the reviews were positive, and give a good idea of what you’d be getting should you decide to splash out £4.99 this week. Check out the free sample chapter, too. There’s a link below.

Nobel Prize winner Luigi Pirandello’s long-unfinshed novel of a privileged young man who one day realises that the way others perceive him is not the way he has always seen himself. Dissatisfied with the idea that everyone who knows him has a different picture of who he is, based on their own preconceptions, he decides to shake things up!

• .pdf e-book (+ audio available free online)
• .mobi (Kindle-compatible) and .epub (other ebook readers) available on request at no extra charge – just add a note to the order form or email us
• 8 chapters to read and listen to
• Comprehension questions to check your understanding
• Italian/English glossary of ‘difficult’ terms for the level
• Suitable for students at intermediate level or above
• Download your Free Sample Chapter (.pdf)

Remember, this week ‘Uno, nessuno e centomila‘ is 50% discounted, so just £4.99 rather than the usual ‘easy reader’ ebook price of £9.99!

Buy ‘Uno, nessuno e centomila‘ just £4.99! | Free Sample Chapter (.pdf) | Italian literature | World Literature | Catalog

Find more ebooks, organised by level, then type: A1 | A1/A2 | A2 | A2/B1 | B1 | B1/B2 | B2 | B2/C1 | C1 | C1/C2 | C2

How do I access my ebook?

When your order is ‘completed’ (normally immediately after your payment), a download link will be automatically emailed to you. It’s valid for 7 days and 3 download attempts so please save a copy of the .pdf ebook in a safe place. Other versions of the ebook, where available, cannot be downloaded but will be emailed to people who request them. There’s a space to do that on the order form – where it says Additional information, Order notes (optional). If you forget, or if you have problems downloading the .pdf, don’t worry! Email us at the address on the website and we’ll help. Also, why not check out our FAQ?

P.S.

Did you read/listen to Tuesday’s FREE bulletin of ‘easy’ Italian news?

EasyItalianNews.com publishes three bulletins for learners of Italian (text + audio) each week, on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays.

Didn’t see it? Then you should subscribe. It’s FREE.

To do that, enter your email address on this page, watch out for the ‘please confirm’ email, click the link it contains, then sit back and wait to receive  the next bulletin, tomorrow (Thursday).

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