No time to read this? Why not find something to study instead? A1 – Beginner/Elementary | A2 – Pre-Intermediate | B1 – Intermediate | B2 – Upper-Intermediate | C1 – Advanced | C2 – Proficiency | What’s my level? | Italian level test

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Buondì.

A few days ago someone emailed the club to say that they were a beginner in Italian, to thank us for the free A1 – Beginner/Elementary materials on our site (see the links above for other levels), but to say that they had no idea where to start.

My immediate thought was ‘Yep, that’s a problem, I know. But we’re not an app’, followed by ‘Just do something, then do something else, then – if you can keep up your motivation – you’ll no longer be a beginner, so will have other problems’.

Many times in the past I’ve replied to such ‘please help’ emails, often at length. This because I was, for decades, a language teacher. It’s the nature of the beast – teachers must teach.

And yet, often I’d get no acknowledgment of my carefully-crafted replies, or worse, there’d be an immediate response of the ‘Yes, but…’ kind, suggesting they’d not read, or not appreciated, my advice.

You’ll understand how wearing this gets after a while. OnlineItalianClub.com is a free resource, and I run it for free (though in part it’s marketing for our Italian school in Bologna and various online activities – see below).

So recently I’ve ceased replying, especially to very brief, unsigned emails such as “I want to learn Italian”. Sometimes I’ll send a link to this long article, which no one ever reads. But these days, rarely even that.

Pondering the ‘no idea where to start’ lady, I considered replying that she should get herself an Italian teacher, who would decide for her. Problem solved!

But to be fair, people come to OnlineItalianClub.com BECAUSE it’s free. If I didn’t believe that club members could teach themselves a language, without paid resources or help, then I wouldn’t be running the site. It wouldn’t be honest.

So, signorina, here at OnlineItalianClub.com we have the resources you need, or at least most of them. They’re free. We have other services and products that aren’t free, but you could make reasonable progress with just the free materials if you’re so inclined.

How to begin? Reading the long article would be a good start. It’s long because learning a language isn’t easy, fast, or necessarily simple.

If that sounds off-putting, well at least you’ll know the difficulties BEFORE you commit time – and potentially money – to the project. Money? Well, at some point you’ll need someone to practice speaking Italian with, and paying a native-speaker for their time is the simplest way to do that.

Back to me and my own language-learning, which is half-hearted right now but will hopefully get a boost as I get used to having free time (the last five years we’ve been fostering babies, so haven’t had a minute to ourselves.)

My Italian has more or less got to the point where I’m as happy reading and listening to Italian as I would be in English. I’m currently reading C.S. Forester’s ‘Il tenente di vascello Hornblower’ on the library app, and Herman Melville’s ‘Moby-Dick’ in English with Google Books. I alternate according to my mood, but Hornblower in italiano is easier (and much shorter) than Melville’s odd story-telling.

I get my news mostly in italiano, too. Daily or hourly from Rainews.it, and sometimes also from other sources such as ‘Il Fatto Quotidiano’ (thanks to the library app) or Milano Finanza (ditto).

But let’s put aside Italian, as I’m sure you’ll be thinking something like ‘well, easy for him, he lives in Bologna’.

Each day I also listen to half an hour of news highlights in Swedish (which I taught myself – to approximately intermediate level) and might browse the Swedish news headlines, too. And I totally don’t live in Sweden, a country which I’ve visited only twice in my life. So there.

The French have a good rolling news radio station, which I listen to often, though not every day. The website and app have plenty of articles to browse, and sometimes I do. The current headline is (apologies to GOP readers) ‘”Je serai monsieur Veto” : que pourra faire Donald Trump jusqu’à la fin de son mandat face à un Congrès démocrate, après la défaite des républicains aux midterms ?’

The Spanish TV/Radio website is a well-funded and reliable guide to what’s going on in the world. As I type this they’re reporting that ‘El demócrata El Sayed gana en Michigan y se convierte en el primer senador musulmán de EE.UU.’ Hurrah to that. Technically I’m a muslim myself, having married a Turkish girl in my youth and promised her mom that I’d put on a good show for the relatives. And our next-door neigbours are from Egypt, and haven’t exploded or rioted yet.

My other language is Turkish, which I spoke for several years with my ex-wife but have neglected for decades since marrying an Italian. Given a push I can still speak and understand Turkish to a conversational level (maybe A2+?), but I find it impossible to read. And because of the ‘rescue animals’ in recent years I’ve had neither time nor energy to get past that. Maybe one day I will.

Back to, ‘I have no idea where to start’.

Neither did I, I promise you. I studied French until what Americans call ‘junior high’, then quit and have never done formal language-learning since. When I did get interested again (in Turkey, in the early ‘nineties), back then there was no Internet, there were no online resources, it was just bookshops or courses.

Language-learning, I realised, is an inefficient, confusing and slow process. When you’re just starting out, that can come as a shock. After a while, you get used to it. Or you don’t, and quit.

If you have time and money, join a course and/or get a private teacher.

Diplomats learn languages quickly and well. In part that’s because they’re usually smart, motivated people. Mostly it’s because they’re paid well to attend employer-funded language training, provided by professionals.

If you’re not a diplomat, don’t have money, or – like me – have no patience with teachers, then just start. Do something. Learn from the experience, then make better decisions. Forza. You’ll get there!

Also, do loads and loads of reading and listening. Like now, not later. Don’t wait.

Today, incidentally, is a fantastic time to start reading/listening in a foreign language, at least it is for anyone interested in the American mid-terms.

Check out https://www.rainews.it/ (or download the free app to your smartphone or tablet) and find out what’s been happening. The strapline at the top of the app right now reads:

“Chi è Gina Hinojosa, la prima persona di origine latina a governare il Texas”

Context helps a lot, obviously. I find reading about the mid-terms in Italian/Spanish/French/Swedish (not Turkish) much easier than reading about political happenings in any of the countries where those languages are spoken. That’s normal. Spanish/Italian/French politics is impenetrable. Swedish is easier, but still rather weird.

But anyway, a lot of headlines/straplines/photo captions have familiar words. If you can work out what ‘el primer senador musulmán de EE.UU.’ (Spanish) and ‘la prima persona di origine latina a governare il Texas’ (Italian) mean, then you have every chance of being able to teach yourself those languages, and others.

If not, get a teacher.

N.b. There’s a Free Trial Lesson Offer next week. The details are below, and I’ll be emailing about it multiple times from Monday onwards.

Alla prossima settimana!

Next week they’re giving away 150 free online language lessons

It’s November, so soon time for the semi-annual ‘Free Trial Lesson’ offer!

Next week NativeSpeakerTeachers.com will be giving away 150 FREE ONLINE LESSONS (the offer is for new students only.)

This is a promotion they do twice a year when things are otherwise quiet, in November and February.

On these occasions they aim to give away a hundred and fifty free online lessons, normally priced at £22 each.

Try an online lesson with one of their native-speaker teachers, at a cost of exactly ZERO!

You don’t have to buy a lesson to get one free, they won’t even ask for your card details – all they need to organise your lesson is your email address, so their teaching management team can contact you.

It’s a genuinely-free, free offer!

N.B. This promotion is for new students only. The free trial lesson offer is limited to one per person.

To claim your free trial lesson, watch out for the links and details I’ll be mailing out early next week.

Once you’ve completed your online order form, the teaching management team will contact you to find out what your needs and preferences are and, importantly, WHEN you’d like to do your free lesson.

It could take a day or two for them to write to you, so be patient. Also check your spam/junk folder to make sure emails from the teaching management team don’t get missed!

There’s no rush to do the free trial lesson, which doesn’t have to be next week – the offer ends on Sunday 15th November 2026, but that’s just a promotional deadline, not a limit for actually doing the lesson.

• The Free Trial Online Lesson offer begins on Monday 09/11/26 and ends on Sunday 15/11/26
• No need to actually DO the lesson next week, just ‘book’ it
• Remember: this offer is for NEW STUDENTS ONLY
• If you booked a free trial last time but didn’t take it – do try again!
• But if you’ve already done a free trial in the past, sorry…
• After completing your lesson, you’ll be sent a 15% discount coupon

How much do online lessons with a native speaker teacher cost when they’re NOT free, you might be wondering?

Buy 5, 10, 20 or 30 lesson credits  at a time (they don’t  expire, so you’ve nothing to lose), and you’ll get a discount!

Check the prices here:

Online Italian lessons | Online Spanish lessons | Online French lessons | Online German lessons

P.S.

And of course, don’t forget to read/listen to Tuesday’s bulletin of news from EasyItalianNews.com.

Reading/listening practice will help you consolidate the Italian you’re studying, expand your vocabulary, and build vital comprehension skills.

EasyItalianNews.com is FREE to read/listen to.

Subscribing, and so receiving all three text + audio bulletins of ‘easy’ news via email each week – on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays – is also FREE.

Just enter your email address on this page and click the confirmation link that will be sent to you.

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OnlineItalianClub.com | EasyItalianNews.com | Shop (ebooks) | Shop (online lessons)

OnlineFrenchClub.com | OnlineSpanishClub.com | OnlineGermanClub.com

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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 mailing list.

No time to read this? Why not find something to study instead? A1 – Beginner/Elementary | A2 – Pre-Intermediate | B1 – Intermediate | B2 – Upper-Intermediate | C1 – Advanced | C2 – Proficiency | What’s my level? | Italian level test

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Buondì.

Since Bug left – nearly two weeks ago now – I’ve had time to work, but very little enthusiasm.

However, yesterday I spent much of the day at our Italian school in Bologna, as I had to do a teacher-training session for the staff there.

In an idle moment, after making the photocopies and reviewing my session notes, I looked at the traffic stats for the OTHER club websites (Spanish, French, German), which were predictably poor, given that I’ve been busy parenting small animals for the past five years.

Having recently concluded that I’d never motivate myself to do anything with the Spanish, French and German sites – and anyway, why bother if no one’s interested, and AI is coming, and… – I’d already planned not to renew the online(language)club.com domains, which expire this coming Saturday. And to subsequently delete the websites when the 5-day grace period runs out. One less thing to feel bad about!

But then, sitting there on Madrelingua‘s yellow leather couch (all the classrooms were full, which is a good sign, at least) peering at my laptop screen, I remembered a problem which I’d never resolved, one which was quite possibly the cause of the depressing traffic stats.

Put simply, if you’ve ever visited a website with a URL that begins with http:// (for instance, http://onlinespanishclub.com/) your web browser might have flashed warnings telling you that the site is ‘unsafe’ and that you should hurl your computer, tablet or smartphone out of a window, and run like the wind before it detonates.

Whereas when the URL (website address) begins with https:// (like this one https://onlinespanishclub.com/) there’s no such hysteria and your click simply results in the webpage being displayed.

The extra ‘s’ stands for ‘secure’, apparently, which means that if the URL begins with https:// connections between your device and the website are encrypted, while when it’s an http:// the data exchanged between you and the website is visible to all who might wish to spy on it, assuming they can be bothered and have the necessary tech skills.

Why would you care if the world’s hackers can see that you’re browsing the Spanish Grammar 101 Possessive Adjectives page at http://onlinespanishclub.com/?

Actually, there’s no reason. Despite flashing red pages and dire warnings not to proceeed, your device really won’t blow up. Your eyebrows won’t be burned right off. Your soft furnishings won’t get singed.

The ‘secure’ part of the https:// blah-blah thingy totally IS relevant when you’re entering personal information, especially if financial, such as credit card details.

Suppose you were in the market for ebooks to improve your Italian, for instance? Then you might visit this URL https://easyreaders.org/catalogue/ and, having decided to splash some cash on your learning, be reassured that the ‘s’ means no bad actors can monitor the back and forth between your laptop or smartphone and the website’s server. It’s all encrypted. Hurrah!!

That said, most websites don’t handle their own payment processing. It’s almost always done by a specialist on THEIR website rather than on the vendor’s site. For example, we use Stripe for our three shops (Madrelingua, EasyReaders.org, NativeSpeakerTeachers.com). In return for a commission they handle everything, and their security is world-class. Apparently.

At EasyItalianNews.com donations are processed via Paypal, again in return for a commission, again with world-class encryption. And so on.

So, though it shouldn’t really matter that hackers could, if they were so inclined, see how poor your Spanish, French and German is when you use our ‘other’ clubs, likely all the red, flashing ‘this site is insecure’ warnings would – over the years I’ve been minding small animals instead of my own business – have affected the traffic. Fewer people would have discovered and profited from the materials because web browser software was ‘protecting’ them.

How come then that all our other websites are secure/encrypted but the ‘other’ clubs aren’t/weren’t?

https://onlineitalianclub.com/ is an independent website, meaning that it’s easy and free to add the ‘s’ encryption, though unnecessary as nothing sensitive is ever asked for.

Whereas I set up the Spanish, French and German sites as subsections of what’s called a ‘multisite’ WordPress installation (don’t ask) and – back in the day – changing the http:// to the reassuring though unnecessary https:// was – for some reason – impossible.

E così. Pottering on my yellow couch, I Googled ‘https for multisite’ and discovered that the world had moved on while I’d been changing diapers. It would, apparently, also be easy and free to encrypt traffic to and from the ‘other’ clubs, too.

Took about ten minutes in the end – I wish training teachers were so simple and satisfying. But I was left with a problem: now the sites were ‘secure’, likely more people would take a look, so they might be worth investing in. And now, senza-Bug, I have time to burn, so to speak. All the stars are aligned!

Except that the ‘other’ club domains are all expiring, and the ebook company’s bank account (Easy Readers LLP operates all the clubs, including this one) was just drained by a massive bill from our expensive bulk mailing system.

Conclusion? I need to sell some ebooks, and fast. Ideally before Saturday!!

Learning Italian? Browse the Catalog. There are free sample chapters for everything. Please look at them before buying anything – it saves a lot of customer service hassle.

Ebooks for learning other languages are also on the Catalog page, or follow these links to go directly to the materials for the language you want to improve: French | Spanish | German

N.b. The ‘other’ club sites (Spanish, French and German) all feature a free ‘easy reader’ and a free parallel text. Find them in the site menu, and/or download the same text as a .pdf from the ebooks store’s Catalog page (scroll down for the ‘other’ languages).

Oh, and I nearly forgot – the ebooks store has a 33% coupon code for new customers. You have to get on the mailing list to receive it, but unsubscribing is easy. Details are here: https://easyreaders.org/mailing-list/

Gotta go prep for an online Swedish conversation at lunchtime.

Then on to my third beginners’ Spanish grammar lesson. I’m learning and proof-reading/editing at the same time, which is fun!

Alla prossima settimana.

P.S.

And here’s the inevitable reminder to read/listen to Tuesday’s bulletin of news from EasyItalianNews.com.

Reading/listening practice will help you consolidate the Italian you’re studying, expand your vocabulary, and build vital comprehension skills.

EasyItalianNews.com is FREE to read/listen to.

Subscribing, and so receiving all three text + audio bulletins of ‘easy’ news via email each week – on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays – is also FREE.

Just enter your email address on this page and click the confirmation link that will be sent to you.

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OnlineItalianClub.com | EasyItalianNews.com | Shop (ebooks) | Shop (online lessons)

OnlineFrenchClub.com | OnlineSpanishClub.com | OnlineGermanClub.com

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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 mailing list.