Today I have another free Italian grammar exercise for you – more practice on prepositions, which is always useful!
As usual, there are twelve sentences to complete with the correct preposition.
If you already have a good level in Italian, you could think of it as a diagnostic test to help you spot any gaps in your knowledge. In which case, just study the ones you get wrong, or were doubtful about, and ignore the ones you got correct.
If, on the other hand, you haven’t a clue, then the twelve sentences are a good place to start sorting that out.
Read the sentences carefully (use a dictionary, if you must!) Look for similarities with English or your own mother tongue and identify where Italian differs in the use of prepositions.
Make a note of both the similarities and the differences and study them. That’ll help you get a better sense of how Italian prepositions work.
When writing notes, group together examples of particular prepositions. There are several with ‘per’ for example. If you need more help or examples, Google the word to see what comes up.
One idea that works well is to write down and memorise the whole sentence – for example, number 1:
Ho appena cominciato ___ studiare quindi non posso venire con voi ai giardini.
Remember the sentence as a whole, not just the verb plus the preposition that goes with it. That way you’ll be feeding your brain a ‘pattern’, an example which will hopefully help you recognize other, similar structures in the future.
Another thing you could do is riff on the sentences from the exercise to create things you could say yourself, for example:
Ho appena cominciato ___ pulire la casa quindi non posso parlare ora.
Write a few different ones, using the same structure as in the exercise. Or Google ‘Ho appena cominciato’ and see what comes up. Add suitable examples to your notes.
Conclusion? Think of the exercise not just as a quick activity that you’ll do in a few minutes and then forget, but as a resource that can be used in different ways to ‘grow’ your Italian.
Note that the key to REALLY learning from this sort of thing is to come back to your notes in a day or so, and then perhaps a week later, so as to maximize your chances of recalling what you’ve studied.
If you make a note on your calendar to revise the material tomorrow morning, and then again this time next week, you’ll find the differences you identified much easier to fix in your skull!
Try today’s Italian grammar exercise
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I’m in a bit of a rush today, so don’t have time to go through this all again, but if you’d be happier with a teacher guiding your learning for you, don’t forget our current offer on online Italian lessons.
There were full details of the offer in Friday’s post, which you can find here.
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Visit our online shop, select the package of lessons which best suits your situation and budget, add it to your shopping cart, then copy and paste the code above into the ‘coupon code’ box.
For just a few more days, you should see the total cost reduced by 20%!
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Buono studio!