Three things

Buondì.

Three things for you today, in the order they appear in this article: 1.) An article from a previous Summer Sale, in case you missed it; 2.) An ad for the NativeSpeakerTeachers.com Summer Sale – save 20% on online lessons; and 3.) Another ad, this time for the half-price eBook of the Week offer.

Despite appearances, we’re not all ads here at OnlineItalianClub.com. You can, for example, click through to the website, and access literally thousands of pages of useful, interesting, but above all FREE material, no registration or membership required.

If you just joined us, and were waiting to be drip-fed, or worse, spoon-fed materials to learn Italian with, go take a careful look at the site. ‘Do your own research’, as the conspiracy theorists say.

Anyway, this morning, besides doing the back-end for the two promotions, and all the end of month stuff that plagues small businesspeople (payroll, bills, bookkeeping etc.), I have an online Swedish lesson at noon.

Given that we had (another) disturbed night (our cub, Bug, has a cough and a sore throat), I need to listen to the news in Swedish to tune my head in before my chat with a native speaker. I’d do it anyway, of course, but understand a lot more if I’ve slept well, which is rare, so listening first helps.

Small animals howling all night or no, you could do the same thing with Italian, or if that’s too difficult, train yourself up with the FREE bulletins (text + audio) that our team produces, over at EasyItalianNews.com.

Personally, I’d say that ‘listening’ and ‘speaking’ go together, for what’s the point of one without the other? Ideally, I’d like to be good at both, so I can get most of what my Swedish pensioner has to say to me each week, but also contribute to the conversation.

Just like real life, really.

E così. On to the archive article and the ads.

Alla prossima.

1.) An article from a previous Summer Sale, in case you missed it

A while back I got an abusive email from a club member who was irate because I’d said that language teachers can, at times, be stupid.

Disagree if you like, but I’ve worked with hundreds of them, and as a long-term ‘Director of Studies’ in an actual language school one of my roles was to observe lessons and give feedback, with a view to continuous improvement, etc.

Some of those were just awfully bad. And, of course, I daresay I’ve also done some pretty stupid things myself over the years.

In my professional capacity I don’t go around calling colleagues incompetent, if only because it’s not very motivating, so doesn’t help.

Most people get better at their jobs, given enough time and feedback, assuming they can be bothered, of course.

Ideally we’ll hire people who already know how to keep their students happy and learning. With less-experienced staff, we’ll give them guidelines, training, feedback and so on, then keep our fingers crossed!

But ‘stupid’ comes mostly from my personal experiences as a learner, which – along with many, many positive experiences – has included various painful episodes, one of which I will tell you about now.

It was during the pandemic, when I had time to do weekly online lessons (mostly conversations, in fact, as I’m not a keen student of grammar) in Swedish, Turkish, and Spanish.

At a certain point it occurred to me that I’d studied French at school, and could read it, and understand some of what I heard, so why not have a go at speaking that language, too? I asked the Teaching Management team at what is now NativeSpeakerTeachers.com (see below for details of their Spring Sale) to set me up with a teacher.

The first lesson wasn’t so bad, no worse than I’d expected. The teacher was the same age as my eldest daughter, and clearly not experienced, but she’d prepared a lesson at least, basing it on what I’d emailed her about my perceived level and needs (i.e. I could read, understand speech, but wanted to practice speaking…)

Unfortunately, I was totally ‘blocked’, like I literally couldn’t utter a word of French. It was as if the other languages foremost in my brain had shut off the paths leading to the French which I totally knew, and wanted to use in conversation, yet couldn’t.

If my head was a sink (and some would say it is…) then tipping acid down the plughole might help (though unscrewing the S bend thingy and taking out the gunk with your fingers works much better better), or getting a plumber in.

Funnily enough, I’d never been ‘blocked’ before. It was quite unnerving, even though I’d seen the same condition in hundreds of students over the decades I’d been teaching, and knew it would pass quickly, with a little exposure and practice.

I was therefore keen to do the second lesson, with the same young teacher, and emailed to say that I thought basic conversation practice (personal information, family, likes & dislikes, job, etc.) would be helpful in getting my brain working again, as I was sure it could.

It was therefore VERY DISAPPOINTING when I went online to discover that the young teacher had decided that – as I couldn’t say a word – we would begin French again, from the very beginning, with the ‘Conjugaison du verbe être‘, so Je suis, Tu es, etc.

I went along with this, out of kindness mostly, but also knowing that repeating the basics actually can have an ‘unblocking’ effect. When I’m doing an online lesson in a language I haven’t used in a while (say Spanish, after months doing just Swedish) I might run through the numbers in my head, or some basic conversation exchanges, just to ‘warm up’.

So lesson two felt like a little progress, despite the wasted opportunities for actual conversation. Better than nothing, at least.

In anticipation of lesson three, I reminded the teacher via email, that what I would actually like to do was to run through basic conversation exchanges, so as to ‘unblock’ the French I (swear) I did really know when I read or heard it – I could, I reminded her, understand her when she was speaking only French, and rapidly at that. So enough with the A1 grammar lessons, maybe?

When the lesson actually started, it was clear that my thoughts on content had been ignored. More ‘Je suis’!

At which point, I lost my temper and informed my young colleague that I’d been teaching for longer than she’d been alive, that I was in fact her boss as well as her student, and that we should please proceed as I had indicated. The student is always right!

And she replied…

‘Non!’

It’s the teacher’s job to decide how to teach, she explained (in French), not the student’s. She’d prepared a lesson, and that was what we’d be doing, end of discussion.

Now tell me that’s not ‘stupid’.

I told Lucia to get rid of her, that we could not in good conscience have her teach anyone else, and to please assign me to someone with more sense.

Which she did, another young female my daughter’s age, who was locked down in a rented room and delighted to have someone to chat to, while getting paid.

As predicted, within a few friendly conversations I was more or less unblocked and able to chat in French at a level approaching my reading/listening ability.

No plumber required, just a friendly native speaker who’s willing to listen and interact, in a reasonable simulation of real life. Like having a friend to chat to, basically.

(See the NativeSpeakerTeachers.com offer below.)

2.) An ad for the Summer Sale – save 20% on online lessons

Don’t forget the NativeSpeakerTeachers.com 2024 Summer Sale ends at midnight on Sunday July 7th.

With coupon code 2024-Summer-Sale-20%-Off students of Italian, Spanish, French and German can save 20% on one-to-one language lessons via Skype or Zoom with a native speaker teacher of the language they’re learning.

Everything at our online store, NativeSpeakerTeachers.com, can be had a fifth cheaper than the advertised prices, IF you remember to use coupon code 2024-Summer-Sale-20%-Off.

Get ten one-to-one Italian lessons (or Spanish, or French, or German), and so practise speaking, or get help with grammar, while paying for only eight!

Check out lesson options and prices, not forgetting to mentally reduce the prices you see there by 20% (then to actually use coupon code 2024-Summer-Sale-20%-Off to save £££ on your order!)

How to use the coupon code, exactly?

1.) Make your selection from the one-to-one online lesson options and add them to your shopping cart with the ‘Add to cart’ button.

2.) Go to the actual shopping cart and copy/paste coupon code 2024-Summer-Sale-20%-Off into the box, where it says ‘Coupon code’, to reduce the cart total by 20%.

3.) Press the ‘Apply coupon’ button, then SCROLL DOWN to verify that the CART TOTAL has been reduced by 20% (BEFORE proceeding with your payment…)

Don’t forget, the coupon code is ony good until midnight on Sunday July 7th 2024. Use it as often as you wish until then, with no minimum or maximum spend. The coupon can’t be used together with any other coupon code you may already have.

Have questions? Why not take a look at our FAQ?

The next sale won’t be until the end of September, so still months away…

Get your online lesson credits today – at an unbeatable price: One-to-one lessons via Skype or Zoom

3.) Another ad, this time for the half-price ‘eBook of the Week’ offer

This week’s half-price eBook of the Week offer is the B1/B2-level (intermediate/upper-intermediate) ‘I promessi sposi‘, a title which inelegantly translates as ‘The Engagaged-to-be-Marrieds’.

We have a couple of love birds, a local bad guy, henchmen wielding swords, and – ironically, since we did this one as a mini-book-club in July 2020 – a looming pandemic…

The series of Mini-Book-Clubs that year happened in part because I was promoting our then-new Italian Literature series of ‘easy reader’ ebooks and in equal part because with our Italian school closed, I had little else to do.

Of the five or six full length texts I/we attempted, ‘I promessi sposi’ was the longest by far, and the only one I didn’t finish. I would have liked to, but the world started returning to normal and there were other priorities. Poi, at eight-hundred-plus pages long, well, while all Italians are supposed to read this classic novel at school, I’d bet that very few of them got much further than I did, which is a shame.

So rarely has the need for a SHORT, SIMPLIFIED, EBOOK version been greater (you can easily find the full-length original for free online, if you’re of a masochistic bent…) Better still, this week it’s HALF-PRICE!

N.b. If you’ve nothing better to do, it’s fun to read the commments I and my co-adventurers left in the mini-book-club. Scroll down to the bottom of that page to read them, in date order from oldest to newest.

And as regards our simplified version, the reviews give a good idea of what to expect (as does the free sample chapter linked to below…)

Said to be the most famous and widely-read Italian novel, Alessandro Manzoni’s romantic blockbuster, first published in 1827, is set in the early seventeenth century during the oppressive years of Spanish rule.

Renzo and Lucia are engaged to be wed, but the comely maiden has caught the eye of the local Spanish overlord, who sends a pair of heavies to intimidate the village priest into not performing the marriage. The couple have no choice but to flee their homes in the hope of finding safety…

• .pdf e-book (+ audio available free online)
• .mobi (Kindle-compatible) and .epub (other ebook readers) available on request at no extra charge – just add a note to the order form or email us
• 8 chapters to read and listen to
• Comprehension questions to check your understanding
• Italian/English glossary of ‘difficult’ terms for the level
• Suitable for students at intermediate level or above
• Download your Free Sample Chapter (.pdf)

Remember, this week ‘I promessi sposi‘ is 50% discounted, so just £4.99 rather than the usual ‘easy reader’ ebook price of £9.99!

Buy ‘I promessi sposi‘ just £4.99! | Free Sample Chapter (.pdf) | Italian literature | World Literature | Catalog

Find more ebooks, organised by level, then type: A1 | A1/A2 | A2 | A2/B1 | B1 | B1/B2 | B2 | B2/C1 | C1 | C1/C2 | C2

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P.S.

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It’s FREE, and subscribers get three text + audio bulletins of ‘easy’ news each week, on Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday.

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The regular, free, bulletins are a great way to consolidate the grammar and vocabulary you’ve studied, as well as being motivating and fun!

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