Buondì.
A quick one today as, after an exhausting weekend, I’m lacking both energy and time!
Thanks to everyone who bought a copy of last week’s newly-published and super-hard ‘easy’ Italian reader, La carriera – dietro le quinte del Palio di Siena (C2). If you missed it, it’s still there in our online shop, just no longer discounted by 25%.
This year the plan is to try to alternate promoting materials which are hard (for long-time club members) and easy (for newbies).
Hence this week’s half-price Book of the Week, L’amore ai tempi del supermercato, which at A2 is a full four levels easier than La carriera.
What does that mean in practical terms? Much shorter chapters, much less complexity in terms of grammar and vocabulary, and hopefully, an easier-to-keep-up-with audio recording (available online for anyone to listen to – the link is in the free sample chapter.)
The one thing that La carriera – dietro le quinte del Palio di Siena and L’amore ai tempi del supermercato should have in common, apart from being written by Italian teachers for learners of their language, is that there should be an engaging story. Last week it was thrills and spills at the Siena Palio, this week we’re falling hopelessly in love…
Claudio is a handsome young Italian architect with a passion for girls. That is, until the day he finds love… in a supermarket!
For me, the story is the thing. Language-learning doesn’t have to be a chore. When it comes to materials that are intended to help you build a habit of reading and listening in Italian, students should actually WANT to keep turning the pages.
Will Don Giovanni-figure Claudio get his fingers burnt and learn his lesson? Or will he find true love at last? Or both? All bets are off!
Actually no, but do take a look at the Free Sample Chapter (.pdf), won’t you? This one is a fun read, at least. No domestic abuse or doping this week!
Così. Told you it was going to be a short one today.
A mercoledì, allora!
L’amore ai tempi del supermercato – just £3.99! | Free Sample Chapter (.pdf) | Catalog
P.S.
Saturday’s edition of EasyItalianNews.com has eight articles on a variety of topics, an audio track (which you can listen to as often as you wish) lasting eight minutes and thirty-nine seconds, and best of all, is absolutely free!
You can read/listen to it here.
Four thousand eight hundred and forty-nine people have already subscribed (also free), and so receive each thrice-weekly edition via email.
If that number doesn’t include you: Subscribe. Well, why not? If you don’t get on with it, it’s easy to unsubscribe.
And as I believe I mentioned, it’s free. And you don’t have to give any details, other than your email address.
And it’s free!
Talking of free as we were, actually it’s not free for us at all, given that our writers and editing team get paid for their efforts.
Producing EasyItalianNews.com costs the club around €1300 a month, which is a bargain if 4850 or so people get three 8 minute-long bulletins a week for four weeks, so say a total monthly cost of 27 euro cents per subscriber or not much more than 2 euros cents per reader/listener per edition.
Nevertheless, ‘sono soldi’ (it’s money) as Italians would say. Generous donors help us out with some of the costs (read who and how much). The rest comes out of revenues from the online shop, so basically a proportion of ebook and online lesson sales are reinvested.
Here are those links again…