Third A2 Italian listening exercise, and a ‘spot’

Here’s the latest in our series of A2 (pre-intermediate) level Italian listening comprehension exercises.

We’re getting a lot of new people joining our club right now – if that’s you, benvenuto/a!

We hope you find our free materials useful, and that you’ll want to join in the conversations that (occasionally) take place amongst our members, people who are learning Italian around the world.

To introduce yourself, and hopefully make some friends, fill in the comment form at the bottom of this article on our website: view this article on our website.

So, to business:

• you should see an image with the task here below, and below that, the listening plug-in.
• listen, answer the questions, and post your answers as a comment on this article. There’ll be a transcript for today’s exercise next time.

Ready to go?

(If you don’t see either the image or the plug-in, click here to view this article on our website.)

If you’d like to share your answers to this exercise, or read what others write, view this article on our website (the comments are at the bottom).

Transcript for the previous exercise

Below is the transcript from the second exercise in this series. If you missed it, or if you would like to listen to it again while you read the transcript, click here.

Giovedì è stato il compleanno di Andrea. I fratelli hanno passato molto tempo a decidere il regalo da fargli.
Giorgio, il fratello maggiore voleva regalargli un computer nuovo, ma era troppo costoso. Paolo, il fratello minore, voleva regalargli un orologio.
Alla fine hanno deciso di andare al centro commerciale a cercare il regalo giusto.
Al centro commerciale Paolo e Giorgio hanno visitato vari negozi. Prima sono andati in gioielleria a vedere un orologio, ma anche quello era troppo costoso. Così hanno deciso di andare il libreria.
Alla fine sono andati in un negozio di elettronica e hanno deciso di comprare un telefono nuovo per Andrea.
Andrea è stato molto felice del regalo.

P.S.

‘Spot’ in Italian is one of those borrowed words that end up with a different meaning from that which is typical in the language they are borrowed from.

When Italians talk about a ‘spot’, they don’t mean the marks your husband made dripping pasta sauce down his new shirt, nor the infected and swollen pore on your nose that will typically afflict you right before a hot date.

In Italian, ‘spot’ means ‘commercial’ or ‘advert’ – those irritating breaks in your favorite programs which have the purpose of selling you something.

Which brings me to the point…

We’re about to restart our online conversation classes – these are group classes with up to five students, and an Italian teacher. They meet once a week for five weeks. The cost is modest, and there’s no software to install, but you do need to have a decent Internet connection…

You’ll find full details here: Online Italian Conversation lessons