Result!
I’ve just tried out today’s Italian grammar exercise, which has the intimidating title of ‘Concordanza dei tempi verbali all’indicativo 1‘.
When I pressed ‘Punteggio’ (score), the computer flashed up the message:
Benissimo! Tutte corrette!
The questions are a mix of tenses and conditional forms.
If you’re doing plenty of reading and listening in Italian, you should quickly pick up an idea of what ‘sounds right’.
At which point, if your grammar is shaky like mine, you can rely on instinct when doing exercises of this type.
(Watch out for the spelling mistake, which I’ll add to my list of things to fix!)
Friday’s Book of the Day
If you’ve been paying attention, you’ll have seen that this week I’ve been running brief ‘Book of the Day’ promotions on some of our Italian easy readers.
This is because I think these e-books with audio represent excellent value for money as study materials, but more importantly because I know from my own experience as a learner and as a language teacher that they can be very effective.
Reading and listening is the missing link between taking a traditional Italian course and building fluency in the language.
And working on a STORY, with characters, a plot, and tension to be resolved, will motivate you to keep going until the end of the text.
Which means you’ll be getting more Italian into your skull, hopefully in a more natural way, as you focus on meaning rather than the grammatical form.
It doesn’t take a genius to see that the more Italian that goes in, the more Italian will eventually come out!
So, how to use the easy readers?
Typically I recommend that you DON’T stop to check difficult words. Instead, follow this procedure:
- Read/listen to the whole text (the book, if you can, or at least a whole chapter). Don’t worry if you only catch some of it – that’s quite normal!
- Then (maybe after a break, or the next day) read it again slowly, but this time without the audio. On the second reading, take more time, reflect on the meaning, work out the things you didn’t catch before.
- Finally, just listen, without the text. This time you’re focusing on building listening comprehension skills. It’s hard, but gets easier with practice, and of course you can repeat this as often as you like. Come back to the same text a week later, for example.
If you really must look up the words you don’t know (it’s much better to guess from the context), leave it until the second step. Definitely don’t keep stopping the audio to check things. Let is run.
This procedure represents an interesting, fast and effective way to boost your Italian. Obviously, you’ll want to start with easier materials and step up a level only when you feel confident, which is fine.
Equally obviously, the more books you read/listen to, the more your confidence and knowledge of the language will grwo!
OK, so today’s ‘Book of the Day’ offer is ‘Il giocoliere‘ (The Juggler) which, at level A1/A2, is suitable for almost everyone.
It’s a nice story, written by our script-writing online Italian teacher, Giovanni, who also does our ‘Book of the film’ series (the ones with blue covers in our shop…)
A young student has her purse stolen on a crowded bus in Bologna (the ancient university city and culinary mecca where Giovanni and I live).
She doesn’t have much money to lose, but is upset because her purse contained a photograph which is precious to her…
Take a look at ‘Il giocoliere‘ here.
There’s a free sample chapter to download.
And for today, it’s half price, at just €4.99 instead of the usual €9.99!