It’s been a good couple of weeks since I posted here, and people are starting to nag…
I noticed that, you are not writing recently.. Is there some problem or did you decide to quit the page? I hope you did not. Coz, I really benefit out of this super user friendly web site.
Thanks, Aysegul, from Turkey I presume. That’s very motivating.
Actually, I’ve been busy. Coming back from holiday is always a shock, plus there’s a mountain of work right now preparing our Italian school for the coming season.
Lucy e-mailed too, to tell me about some broken links on the site (thanks). She’s in the UK, and would like to be a translator but only has a B1/intermediate level in Italian and needs a C2.
I suggested that if she really wanted to improve her level, a decent course would do the job.
People who study full-time will typically improve around a level in 4-6 weeks, so that if she could somehow find four months, perhaps take a sabbatical, she should be able to reach her goal.
B1, B2, C1, C2, and Bob’s your uncle, Lucy.
Her reply:
Do you really think I could get to C2 level that quickly? Fantastic….. I take I you think that the £500+ Open University B1 course is a bit overpriced?
Interesting point. Well, no, not really. If the Open University charges you just £500 a level, that seems pretty reasonable to me. Even cheap. Assuming the course works, of course.
You can’t buy a lot with five hundred quid these days, after all.
So that’s today’s topic decided, and it’s one I hope will generate lots of comments!
If it were just a question of forking over the cash, what would you be willing to pay to speak really good Italian?
Let’s take a step back, for a sec.
Suppose you don’t know hardly any Italian at all, but would really like to speak the language “fluently” (hate that word).
Obviously, there’s the matter of finding the time, but what would it be worth to you in terms of money?
We’re talking about being able to pick up a newspaper and understand virtually everything. Reading a book, watching TV, writing a blog post in Italian, getting a job.
In short, using the language fairly naturally, and effortlessly.
Wouldn’t that be great??
Back in the days before I ran my own language school, I spent TEN THOUSAND EUROS on a crappy post-graduate course that I hoped would land me a better job.
I studied my ass off, evenings, weekends and holidays, for over two years.
Did I get a better job? Nope.
Turns out my Italian wasn’t good enough so nobody took me seriously at interviews.
Funny, I hadn’t had the time or money to do a LANGUAGE course. I was planning to just pick it up.
Bad decision, 15 years later, I’m still picking.
So here’s some advice to my younger self, and to you, Lucy.
If you really want or need to learn a language, because you hope to get a job, or graduate from university, or marry someone who only speaks Italian, here’s three tips:
- Don’t mess about, like I did.
- Do a course. For as long as necessary. Like I didn’t.
- Choose a proper one. Not necessarily the cheapest.
Learn from the professionals. Diplomats, for example.
Before taking up a post, they pick a good language school and spend some months, and plenty of their government’s money, taking classes. It’s not that they are just good at languages, though they usually are. It’s that their employers know they need to invest lots of money and time so that they can develop their skills before being assigned to their posts.
Every year at our school in Bologna we see people from all walks of life, and of all ages, arrive knowing nothing of Italian, then leaving again months later with a good (sometimes excellent) level in the language.
We teach diplomats sometimes, professional sports people, priests, the odd politician, scientists, business people, marketing managers, retired people, students, and plenty of people marrying Italians. Plenty of people like you, too.
It’s absolutely possible to learn. Anyone can. It just takes time, and money.
In case you were wondering, a 6-month course at our Italian language school in Bologna currently comes to €3773 (less if you’re crafty enough to sign up to the mailing list and get a 15% discount voucher.)
With the discount that’d be just 2750 of your funny British pounds Lucy. For more than enough time to reach your goal, and have loads of fun in the process!
Less than £3000? To achieve a level in a foreign language that would allow you to get a job, impress your friends and chat up foreigners in bars?
It’s not that much, really.
P.S. I’ll be back to posting about prepositions and pronouns soon!
P.P.S. I LOVE getting e-mails, but I like it even more when we get some discussion going here on this site. So go on, leave a comment. Please.
Dot Read says
Hi Daniel,
What a wonderful thought – 6 months doing nothing but studying Italian in Italy! Sounds like a dream. I can imagine that for some people it is something they can, or possibly must, do.
But for most of us, it wouldn’t just be the cost (there would of course also be the cost of accommodation for 6 months), but the impossibility of leaving the job, spouses / partners, children / grandchildren for that length of time.
However, I must admit I have never really even considered this as a possibility, but maybe it is worth a thought. Not for 6 months (that’s definitely out of the question) but possibly for a month. Because that should (according to your theory, and if I worked hard) improve my Italian by one level – which would be great in itself.
When I came to Madrelingua for 2 weeks a few years ago, it was brilliant, and my (beginner’s) Italian definitely improved.
A month’s annual leave would be difficult, though not necessarily impossible, from the NHS. Or maybe when I retire (which isn’t that far away). And maybe the family could come out to Italy for a mini-break to see me…………………….
Now look what you’ve done …….. I’ve started to actually think about it!
Dot
Daniel says
Dot, you’d be surprised how many people are thinking the same way! Though there are more younger people and retirees, it’s true.
Sometimes we have people who come to Italy to study then refuse to go home!
Dot Read says
No way! Amazing.
Lucy Williams says
Hi there, thanks so much for the reply in article form.
I hope that others find some use or inspiration from it also. I share many of the views expressed above by Dot Read. I am not in a position financially at the moment to be able to undertake such a luxury as 6 months in Italy. I did a degree in Italian and had a year abroad as part of it so I feel like I need to count myself lucky for that, lament long and hard over the fact that my 20 year old immortal self took nearly the whole time for granted, and face the fact that I need to make serious compromises to do something similar now that I am 31 and getting well and truly entrenched in the drudgery and ‘necessity?’ of full time work, and all the trials and tribulations that this brings. Before my year abroad I spent a month in Siena at the University there, doing an intensive language preparatory course and that worked out to be one of the best months of my life. Like you, Dot Read, I am now seriously considering a month of intense study again in Italy, but with the head of an office working 30 something with still some lust for life that hasn’t been quite quashed yet, and who would gorge on every single molecule of italianness during a month of such luxury, instead of with the head of a 19 year old who thought that being able to order different types of gelato would kick it in the real world and worried more about what to wear to meet friends in the Piazza that making sure I used the subjunctive more often.
I have to say that I am very grateful for the amount of help provided by this website.
This said, however, I am starting to get a bit confused as to what the message really is about all of this. Forgive me if I am missing the point, but part of your initial advice in your emails to me was that with self study (something that I adore by the way), and through purchasing some ebooks and using online materials I would be able to get myself to a stage where I could sit the CILS exams and work my way through the levels. But, at the same time there is the message that £500 and more is really very cheap for a course in one level. I am not disputing that this may be very good value for money, I am just unsure whether I am understanding correctly.
I am thinking that the first step for me would be to build on my language level with some self study and a possible exam to see exactly where I am, then when it comes to being in the C levels I could invest in a course for a month in Italy perhaps where obviously the acceleration would be higher due to the immersion method. I guess my question about surely the £500 option being overpriced was based on thinking that if I worked through the ebooks I would be able to achieve a similar result. I suppose what I would really be paying for with a course is the discipline, deadlines to meet etc.? I am just not sure I want to part with £500 for a virtual kick up the culo, y’know?
Comments, contradictions, and putting on the right path most welcome….
Daniel says
I think you partly answered your own question there, Lucy.
Paying lots of cash for a course is a way of insuring against the high likelihood of failure with the self-study option. You’re less likely to lose motivation, get snowed under by other priorities in your life, and so on.
Studying “full-time” because you paid for it means a greater probability of the outcome you desire, and is of course much faster.
But it costs a LOT more, and you have to find a big chunk of time.
In short, it all depends on just how important/urgent your desire is.
This site is mostly for people who like studying Italian, but don’t necessarily urgently need to.
A language school, on the other hand, caters to people who people who are happy to pay up and join in, knowing that there’ll be a fairly predictable result.
Is your need urgent? Better a course.
Lack time or money, or just doing it for fun? Better self-study.
On a personal note, I often need to learn stuff to do with marketing, say how to set up an advertising campaign on Google. There are courses, but they’re time consuming and expensive, so I usually choose the self-study option, signing up for sites like this and looking for free or reasonably priced resources I can learn from immediately.
Hope that helps!
Dot Read says
Hi Lucy,
If it’s the OU “Vivace” course you are thinking of doing, that’s the one I did a few years ago.
It is the second OU Italian course, so classed as intermediate, but university level 1 – I’m sure you know all this. I found it good, as there are exercises on DVD-Rom, so you have to practise speaking (you actually record yourself) as well as 2 course books which you work through. There are also 3 or 4 half-day face-to-face tutorials which help a lot, and also “live” electronic tutorials with other class members and the tutor, which I also found very useful and would recommend – many people didn’t do these however. Having said that, there isn’t a great deal of chance to practise actually speaking, although the progression through grammar points is quite thorough.
If you have done a degree before, it may be too easy for you – unless you feel you need to revisit basic grammatical stuff. I found it quite difficult, but I had never done an actual taught Italian language course before (apart from 2 weeks at Madrelingua!) – I had done mainly beginners’ CDs and books.
For me personally, I found it a very good course and £450 (as it was then) well spent. But obviously I can’t say whether you would find it so.
What I am finding useful at the moment is my weekly Italian conversation group, and doing some of the exercises on this site, which are very useful.
Hope this helps!
Dot
Daniel says
That’s helpful, Dot. Thanks for contributing. I hope Lucy saw it.
Lucy Williams says
Hi
Thanks so much for this reply. I have only just logged back on to see it I’m afraid.
I am in a strange position you see. I do indeed have a degree in Italian, but I did it from scratch, so the learning curve was high. I can form some intricate grammatical structures but also get doubts at some of the most basic points. Also, because there was such a fast learning of the grammar to get us up to scratch from zero, I feel like there is a lack of vocab which would have been built up and consolidated had I done Italian before at Alevel etc. So, to be perfectly honest, I have big blanks in my knowledge, and areas where there is a big need for consolidation. I think this OU course would be good for me to get a strong foundation at B1 level and fill in the gaps, even though when I do the online CILS level tests they come back saying I am around B2 just because I know the grammar when written down etc. This does not mean that I have the confidence that I should at my level. Thanks for the info. I believe the OU course is £1281 at the moment but because I live it Wales it is just £520. Perhaps it is the perfect way to bride a few gaps for me and have some enforced deadlines. Plus, I could pay monthly, and the credits would count towards any further degree I may do with them. I am tinkering with the idea of an English degree with creative writing modules to help with translation etc so at least studying Italian with them would give credits. I have heard mixed reviews of this course so thanks for the honesty.
John Thomson says
c’è buono di rivederti Daniel, mi preoccupavo, pensavo che c’era un problema, il lavoro duro non e mai un problema.
allora, una vacanza a Bologna studiare italiano, che buona idea ma purtroppo sono troppo vecchio. Se fossi piu giovane, io sarei il primo di montare l’aeroplano
John