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Buondì.
There are two types of language learner: those who like to study, and those who don’t.
As a young man I learnt Turkish in bars, later in bed.
A few years on I started to pick up Italian while living and working in Bologna. It was torturously slow, but over a quarter of a century the cumulative effect hasn’t been so bad.
And more recently, as a challenge to club members who think learning Italian must have been easy for me ‘because I live here’, I decided to teach myself Swedish (my mother-in-law’s native tongue…), which I have been doing by listening to the radio, reading newspapers, and chatting to Swedish people online, mostly non-teachers.
I guess you could say I’m in the second category, as most club members definitely AREN’T.
You wouldn’t believe all the nonsense I’ve heard over the years about ‘perfecting the grammar first, then focusing later on listening/speaking’.
Despite the ‘communicative’ focus in professional language schools (such as our Italian school in Bologna) going way, way back now, to the nineteen-seventies, plenty of people can only conceive of language learning in terms of ‘studying’, ‘understanding’, ‘memorising’ and so on.
And not just students, teachers too!
My mission in more recent years has been to emphasise the importance of the ‘bars/bed/radio/newspapers/chatting online’ side of language learning, not necessarily exclusively, but at least in equal measure.
And yet… grammar sells, and in support of our various online educational initiatives, for instance this club, and EasyItalianNews.com, we’ve needed to generate cash.
Hence the self-study workbooks (all .pdf format ebooks) which I’m promoting below.
The first one (scroll down) was my own idea. We had an intern at the school who was at a loose end. He got to do Italian lessons each morning, in return for ‘working’ in the afternoon, but there wasn’t anything obvious that needed doing.
“I know” I told him, “why not write up what you’re studying in class each day so we can post it on the club website?”
“Start with the tenses” I suggested, “people love tenses!”
And indeed they do, as over the years we’ve sold six hundred or so copies of The Tenses You Need To Speak Italian.
The intern, who’s probably a middle manager in an insurance company by now, went on to recruit other under-employed young Europeans to take lessons in exchange for work, and together they produced the other five self-study workbooks (scroll down), covering, basically, what is taught in six months of full-time Italian courses, from level A1 right up to C2, the very top.
I guess the young people would also have been doing the bars and bed part, as I’d done a few decades before, so the workbooks are heavy on the grammar and vocabulary while being rather light on practice.
Nevertheless, they’ve all sold remarkably well over the years, so people must like them.
E così. Two types of learners: bars and beds vs. grammar and rote-learning, you read it here first.
The best approach would very likely be to combine the two, so get out (or stay in) and use the language you’re learning, while also studying.
Do both, prioritise neither.
With the internet (so online media, texts, and ‘platforms’ for chatting to people) there’s no excuse to neglect the practice side of things.
Ignoring the grammar (though that’s mostly what I do…) isn’t such a great idea either.
Clearly I’ve not got that balance right. Though I have Bug taking up a lot of my time, plus there’s my mission to get club members reading, listening and speaking, so two excuses!
What about you? Chances are you study (or studied, as most people quit) but neglect(ed) the practice side of things.
Comments on this article are welcome, by the way. To leave a comment on this article (that everyone can read, and respond to if they wish), CLICK HERE, SCROLL DOWN TO THE BOTTOM OF THE PAGE, and complete the comments box.
An email address is required but won’t be published. Comments are manually approved (by me, as an anti-spam measure) so won’t be visible immediately. It could take a few hours, or longer if you’re in a very different time zone. But all genuine comments will, eventually, be published.
Bene. Don’t forget to save 25% on your ebooks…
P.S. 2025 January Sale: Italian self-study workbooks -25%!
As part of the January Sale promotion (see below for details), today we’re drawing your attention to our six ‘self-study workbooks‘.
Each has a substantial free sample, so you can take a look to see if this material might help you progress. There are links below to download the free samples.
And each/all can be discounted 25% , assuming you remember to use the January Sale coupon code (details of how to do that are below, in the P.S.)
Italian Self-Study Workbooks
The Tenses You Need To Speak Italian £19.99 Download FREE sample (.pdf)
Italian Workout! A1 £19.99 Download FREE sample (.pdf)
Italian Workout! A2 £19.99 Download FREE sample (.pdf)
Italian Workout! B1 £19.99 Download FREE sample (.pdf)
Italian Workout! B2 £19.99 Download FREE sample (.pdf)
Italian Workout! C1/2 £19.99 Download FREE sample (.pdf)
Not that into studying? Then why not work on improving your reading/listening comprehension skills instead?
Browse the ‘easy readers’ in our ebooks catalog, where they’re organised by type and level, all with free sample chapters and free online audio!
P.S. Don’t forget, the 2025 January Sale ends Sunday!
Until Sunday 2nd February everything in our online ebooks store (including the grammar workbooks!) is 25% cheaper, though only IF you remember to use this coupon code:
2025-January-Sale-25%-Off
Make your selection from our range of ebooks, which have been especially written to keep you interested and making progress:
Or browse Italian ebooks by level: A1 | A1/A2 | A2 | A2/B1 | B1 | B1/B2 | B2 | B2/C1 | C1 | C1/C2 | C2
To get your discount, just copy and paste coupon code 2025-January-Sale-25%-Off into your shopping cart, then scroll down to check the cart total has been reduced by 25%.
Coupon code 2025-January-Sale-25%-Off also works on graded material for learning Spanish, French or German.
Apply coupon code 2025-January-Sale-25%-Off in your shopping cart to reduce the cart total by 25%!
Stock up on online easy readers, parallel texts and grammar workbooks – at an unbeatable price!
Italian | French | Spanish | German
Here’s that coupon code again:
2025-January-Sale-25%-Off
Don’t forget to use it when you order to save 25% on the price of everything in your cart!
No longer interested?
All bulk emails we send (including this one) contain an unsubscribe link, usually at the bottom. Scroll down to find it, click the link and select ‘unsubscribe’. That will permanently remove your email address from our ebooks mailing list.
P.P.S.
And here’s the usual reminder to read/listen to Tuesday’s FREE bulletin of ‘easy’ Italian news.
The regular text + audio bulletins are a fantastic, FREE way to consolidate the grammar and vocabulary you’ve studied, as well as being fun and motivating.
Take a look at their website (it’s FREE!)
You can get all three text + audio bulletins of ‘easy’ news emailed to you each week, on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays. That’s also FREE!
Just enter your email address on this page then click the confirmation link that’s sent to you.
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OnlineItalianClub.com | EasyItalianNews.com | Shop (ebooks) | Shop (online lessons)
Madeleine Gillies says
Wanted to download samples of workbooks – but couldn’t get past the intensely annoying ‘tick all the cars’ anti robot stuff. Yes, I can try,try again – but not convinced it’s helping your sales. I’m registered to your website and have purchased several items in past.
Daniel says
Ciao Madeleine,
I’m sorry you had problems, and I’m sure you’re right – it won’t be helping our sales.
However, please be aware that IT’S NOT US that’s bugging you to prove you’re human. We’ve no reason to put people off, there’s no such mechanism on our sites, so nothing we can switch off or modify.
To help with this, it would be helpful to know if you were clicking the free sample download links from the emailed article? Or did you actually go through to the Catalog page at EasyReaders.org first, then click the download link from there?
I suspect the former, as it’s what people are most likely to do, but also it might explain the problem – it’ll be the content delivery network (nothing to do with us, an internet thing), or your internet provider (also out of our control) causing the problem.
I see you’re using Gmail (as do I, and I tested the links in the article received in my Gmail – working fine), so that narrows it down to your Internet provider, and/or your device. If you’re using an iPhone or iPad, it could be something Apple related, maybe.
Anyway, simple solution: use a computer if you have one, go here https://easyreaders.org/catalogue/ and click on the free sample links. They’ll work, I’m 100% sure!
Daniel says
Just an update to that, Madeleine, especially as my explanation was wrong…
I managed to replicate the problem with the captchas on the download links, and hopefully have resolved it by moving the free sample downloads to a different webhosting location.
Or who knows, I might have made it worse! We’ll see.
Anyway it was our fault, not your device or internet connection. My apologies, and thank you for pointing out the problem!