Time to restate what I’m about

Buondì.

I’ll keep this short again, as the bloody touch pad on the computer is driving me up the wall – one delicate click comes out as a trembly two, two decisive clicks turn out not to have been felt at all (leaving me stabbing furiously at the machine with semi-numb fingers), and typing this is a much more deliberate, and so time-consuming affair than usual.

OK, so there are so many language learning ‘gurus’ on the internet, so many ‘teach yourself’ experts, so many know-all polyglots. You have my permission to assign me to any or all of these categories, as you wish.

But I will restate briefly for the record how I see myself, and how others who know me well see me (I’m not known to my friends, family or students as an expert, polyglot, or guru!)

I’m a teacher. No one who knows me has any doubt about it. I ITCH to teach. Can’t help myself.

And I have been since 1991, when I got my basic qualification to teach English as a Foreign Language and went to Turkey for a three-year stint.

Specifically, I’m a teacher of adults, but after Turkey I did a year teaching Japanese teenagers in a residential setting in the UK, while at the same time getting a higher level Diploma in TEFL. These days I teach the youngest children in our school, because those are the hardest classes.

After the Japanese kids, I was a Director of Studies in a newish school in Poland (this was the ‘nineties and East Europe was booming.)

Then back in the UK for a couple of years, teaching in a variety of language schools in London, and working as a teacher-trainer. Which is where I met my Italian now-wife (a teacher trainee), with whom I decided to move to Italy to start a family.

There I worked for the prestigious British Council, until they closed us down, after which I opened my own school, which initially taught English to adults and children from the age of three.

The school has been going since 2005, but is now 90% Italian for Foreigners, as the demographics of the ‘learn English’ market in our city are horrible.

In short, I’m a teacher. A jobbing teacher. In the sense that if you have someone that needs teaching and money to pay, I’m your man. I’ll teach anyone anything, given half the chance.

And getting to the point, what that means is that, just like a professional handyman, or a family doctor perhaps, I need to be able to work in many different ways, according to the circumstances and to my clients’ needs.

It’s not that I have some ‘method’ that I profit from, by ramming it down people’s throats. I’m paid for my time, and for my ability to, and experience of, choosing the right way to proceed.

When I have a class of pre-schoolers in front of me, I select activities and a general approach that will be appropriate for them.

If I have the CEO of a company with a million dollar a year turnover sitting opposite me, naturally I’ll do things entirely differently.

With neither type of student are there likely to be second chances! The customer is always right, even when they’re wrong.

There’s no ‘correct’ way to teach a language. There are in fact as many options as the differing needs and preferences that students have.

In my view, a competent teacher is competent to the degree that they can recognise that, and guide their students accordingly.

BUT.

I am also a learner – from when I was chasing girls in Ankara in the early ‘nineties, in Turkish, to bringing up a family of biligual kids and running a business in Italy in the noughties, to recent adventures ‘teaching myself’ since around 2016-17 (so as to have something to write about and reflect on in articles like this.)

And while there is not one right way to teach someone a language, there are many, many possible missteps in learning one, as I can vouch for from personal experience, for I have utterly failed to learn several languages – Hindi, Russian, Japanese, Polish, and others I’ve now forgotten, I’m sure. At the time, I had no idea what I was doing, simple as that.

The sad reality is that most people fail to reach the objectives they set for themselves when beginning a language course.

That’s unsurprising, given that none of us gets taught how to LEARN a language. We might happen on a teacher, a school, a book, an app that works for us (or not), but it’s rare to meet someone with a complete understanding of their own needs and preferences, and the knowlege to choose the approach that would work best for them.

That’s true for language teachers, too. I’ve employed hundreds of them over the years, and few have been particuarly practiced learners themselves.

In short, it’s complicated, and if you haven’t been learning languages for decades as I have (but even after 30 years I have my ups and downs), you can TOTALLY be forgiven for not knowing how to proceed.

Hence the search for gurus, experts, methods, killer apps, and so on.

OK, I promised to restate what I’m about, language-learning-wise, and I assure you, it isn’t complicated.

Most people remember language lessons from school as being mostly about grammar. And so, when directing their own language learning, they’ll naturally begin with what they know – grammar.

There’s nothing wrong with grammar, but if it’s 90% of what you’re doing, my humble suggestion is that you won’t be making as much progress as you could be if you weren’t neglecting the ‘skills’, so speaking, listening and reading (also writing for some people).

Modern language exams, and modern language-learning resources, focus on ‘skills’ practice, because that’s how people really learn languages – a gradual accumulation and expansion of abilities.

And you need dozens, hundreds, thousands of hours of practice at reading, listening, speaking and writing to reach near-native speaker levels of competence, if that’s your desire.

The grammar you could do in a few hundred hours, probably, but why bother if you’ve not already begun the hugely longer and more important process of building your skills?

Learning grammar is also much easier if you’re already ensuring that you’re reading and hearing loads and loads of the language!

Simple as that – learn however you wish, make your own decisions, succeed or fail, then make other decisions – but what I’m here to do is to communicate this:

90% grammar / 10% practice SHOULD BE 10% grammar / 90% practice

Teachers know how to ‘teach’ grammar (it’s easy, but often ineffective), but often not how to get their students practising, especially not autonomously and in a self-directed way, and particularly not for the hundreds, or thousands, of hours that will eventually be needed.

You don’t need a course. You need to practice!

I try to help with that, by commissioning free and paid-for materials which will be interesting and useful.

And by explaining why and how you should use them.

There’s a mass of grammar on the club website, but also practice materials in what I hope is abundance. Plus our ‘easy Italian news’ website, plus the ‘easy readers’ with audio that we sell (see the footer for links to all three websites.)

In short – I want you to have enough opportunities to practice with material that’s suitable to your current level, until you are ready to transition to authentic materials, to strike out on your own in the real world.

After which, if you hang around anyway, then great. For the ‘craic’, as they say. But you’ll no longer need us, because you’ll be learning the language by using it.

My job is to provide materials to get you from here to there, to nag you to use them, to rap your knuckles when you insist on doing something counter-productive (like looking up all the unknown words in a dictionary and trying to memorise them), to answer your questions, and hopefully to give you some sense of ‘community’ during the years you’ll be learning.

N.b. Next week we have our Autumn Sale, which means a 20% reduction on online lessons with a native speaker teacher, and ebooks. Existing students will probably get an email from our Teaching Manager, Lucia, with the coupon code, on or around Thursday this week. For everyone else, full details will be published on Monday Oct. 4th.

Or, if you’d rather not read articles like this one, which do include promotional content (for example, below), then each emailed article has an UNSUBSCRIBE LINK. Feel free to use it.

A mercoledì, allora.

P.S.

THE BELOW IS A DIRECT COPY AND PASTE FROM A BULK MAILING I DID (FROM HOSPITAL ON SATURDAY) TO OUR OTHER, ‘NON-CLUB’ MAILING LISTS. IF YOU’VE ALREADY SEEN IT, APOLOGIES, BUT I’M FOLLOWING CLUB MEMBERS’ ADVICE AND TRYING TO KEEP MY WORKLOAD LIGHT THIS WEEK..

This month at EasyReaders.org we have not one but TWO new ‘easy Italian reader’ ebooks for you to check out!

As always, there are free sample chapters. And as always, the audio is available for anyone to listen to online, no purchase required!

The first story is the B2-C1 level ‘Ashraf, l’arciere dell’imperatore‘, which is set in the Italian peninsula in the thirteenth century.

In the early thirteenth century, Frederick II became Holy Roman Emperor and King of the southern parts of Italy. But in Sicily, a large muslim community rebelled against his rule, so were brutally deported, a safe distance away, to the mainland city of Lucera.

An educated man, the Emperor could speak multiple foreign languages, including Arabic. He enjoyed mixing with the wise men of his day, many of whom were muslim scientists, philosophers or political advisors. With their advice and support, he went on to make peace with the Sultan and to become King of Jerusalem.

Fredrick’s relationship with contemporary popes, at the time the ultimate spiritual authorities and so rivals for power in the Italian pensinsula and elsewhere, was much less positive! Perhaps suspicious of the conflicted loyalties of fellow Christians, the emperor recruiting muslim archers, cavalry and even his personal bodyguard from the exiled Sicilian muslim community, men who would be loyal only to him.

Meanwhile, back in Lucera, a muslim young boy is being schooled in archery by his unsmiling, one-armed father…

• .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)

Buy ‘Ashraf, l’arciere dell’imperatore‘, £7.99! | Free Sample Chapter (.pdf) | Catalog

Our second new ebook is not an original story like ‘Ashraf, l’arciere dell’imperatore‘, but is aimed at students of a similar level.

‘Il Medioevo‘ is our ebook version of a thirty-part series of articles with online audio that walks a curious student of Italian through a neglected period of history, from the end of the Roman empire in 476 CE to the fall of Constantinople, nearly a thousand years later in 1453 CE.

While the articles that make up this ebook are available for free at https://onlineitalianclub.com/history/, this version of the material (.pdf, .mobi Kindle-compatible, .epub versions available) is easily printable and/or readable on an ebook reader, such as the Kindle.

Please note: unlike our other ‘easy reader’ ebooks, for reasons of length (over eighty pages of text with online audio) this one does not contain glossaries of difficult words nor comprehension exercises after each chapter. Take a look at the free sample chapters before you buy!

• .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
• 30 CHAPTERS to read and listen to!
• Suitable for students at intermediate level or above
• Download your Free Sample Chapters (.pdf)

Buy ‘Il Medioevo ‘, just £5.99 this week! | Free Sample Chapters (.pdf) | Catalog

P.P.S.

Don’t forget Saturday’s bulletin of ‘easy’ Italian news, which you can read/listen to for FREE!

Subscribing is free, too! Subscribers receive, via email, every thrice-weekly, simplified Italian news bulletin (text plus online audio) as soon as they are published, on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays!

Enter your email address on this page. Naturally, you can unsubscribe at any moment if you stop learning Italian or don’t find the free material useful.

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