Improve your Italian the easy way!

Buondì.

“Improve your Italian the easy way!” Just buy our special course, book some lessons with our fantastic teachers, blah, blah, blah.

That’s not what this is about.

I was thinking more about choosing ‘easy’ learning activities, rather than ‘hard’ ones.

And once you’ve selected a learning activity, making quiet sure that what you do is done the ‘easy’ way, not the ‘hard’ way.

Idle language-learning!

For instance, you could browse a website such as https://www.rainews.it/.

Browse. That doesn’t sound too challenging, right?

And if, while browsing, you happen upon an article that seems of interest, you could click the headline and glance through it.

Glance through. Do you see where I’m going here?

Focus on including ‘easy’ learning activities in odd minutes of your day, ideally with a view to creating positive learning habits.

Then, what should, in theory (and in all likelihood), happen is that, OVER TIME, your knowledge of the language will improve.

As if by magic! Slow magic.

The trick is to select ‘easy’ activities and resist making them ‘hard’.

So, were you to think that, instead of browsing and glancing through, you’d be more rigorous, choose an article to read and understand ‘properly’, look up the words you don’t know, make a list to memorize, and so on, then…

You might learn a lot!

Once. Or twice.

Or for a few times, until other things seemed more urgent or important.

But in the medium to long term?

If it’s ‘hard’, if it takes priority in your life, then it risks not getting done. Eventually, there’s always going to be something more important.

And the magical learning that comes from ‘easy’ learning habits, won’t happen.

This morning I drove Roomie to her petting zoo, on the other side of the city. While driving, I told her stories about how birds and monkies go to school, too, and that the moon (in full view this morning) is made of mozzarella di bufala, so we could grab some for Sunday evening’s pizza.

On the way back, though, I was alone, so listened to the news highlights in Swedish, which is approximately thirty minutes.

Today was one of those mornings when I didn’t get much from it. Ever noticed that, when you have a bad night, your brain is fuzzy in the morning?

Roomie, who shares my room and bed, doesn’t like covers. So gets cold, then rolls around looking for a source of heat, which is me.

But I don’t wear warm pyjamas with teddy bears on, and am wise enough to appreciate the usefulness of duvets, so when she snuggles up, we fight.

Once warmed up, she’ll kick away the covers. I’ll pull them back up again, she’ll complain and push them off.

Eventually, I’ll be wide awake and fed up struggling with her, so roll over in a sulk, leaving her to get cold, and serve her right.

And half an hour later, the cycle starts all over again… So, not getting much from the radio news this a.m. wasn’t so surprising.

But no matter, it was an ‘easy’ learning activity (no questions to answer, no passing or failing grades), and one I always do during that particular journey.

Easy to select (because it’s a habit), easy to do, doesn’t take time away from anything more useful, and it’s even fun, at times.

Later, I’ll glance through Svenska Dagbladet, a national newspaper available online for free, thanks to my library card.

Svenska Dagbladet isn’t particularly ‘easy’, but the ‘free’ part is motivating. And as I said, I browse, I glance through.

At lunchtime I have my weekly online chat via Skype with a Swedish club member, which these days isn’t much harder than calling my mum on a Sunday evening, and keeps me in the habit of chatting in Swedish.

Later I’ll be going for a thirty-minute walk (as inisisted on by a cardiologist), so will put my wifi ear buds in and listen, while I walk around the park avoiding the geese, to France.info.

I do the same walk every day and, geese attacks aside, it isn’t very interesting. Rolling news in French fills the mental gap nicely.

Also, it’s easy.

On the way to pick up Roomie from the zoo later this afternoon, I’ll listen to RTVE Radio 5 en directo, so thirty minutes of Spanish.

In the evening, given that I prepared tonight’s meal a couple of days ago, and assuming Roomie settles in front of the TV, I’ll profit from the library card’s free online access to El País.

You get the idea.

Note what isn’t going to form part of my day:

• studying grammar
• looking up unknown words
• getting bored
• feeling bad about my progress
• having to force myself to learn

What are YOU going to do today that will help you learn Italian?

Hope it’s something easy!

And habit-forming. And ideally, free.

A venerdì.

P.S.

By the way, have you read/listened to Tuesday’s bulletin of ‘easy’ Italian news?

That would be an ‘easy’ thing to do today!

Also interesting, and it’ll only take ten minutes or so.

(Or thirty minutes if you read/listen to it three times.)

Subscribing, so as to receive bulletins via email each Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday morning (habit-forming, then), is both ‘easy’ and FREE.

Ticks all the boxes, really.

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