Buondì.
As I mentioned the other day, I have a young lad helping me at the moment.
His name’s Matt, and he’s one of those irritating college graduates who, at the age of about twenty, seem to speak several foreign languages perfectly.
Anyway, I have him working on adding tasks to the listening material that lacks them.
A lot of our listening pratice exercises already have tasks, of course.
But many of them don’t, and over the next few weeks, Matt’s job is to fix that.
(His work is being checked by a native speaker, Natalia, who does the recordings for our easy readers.)
Links to their first two efforts are here below.
But before I sign off, I’d point out that listening is ONE OF THE MOST IMPORTANT FORMS OF SELF-STUDY YOU CAN DO.
There, I said it in ALL CAPS, so it must be important!
Seriously, though, there’s a tendency for people like us, the non-Matts of this world, to over-focus on grammar study to the detriment of reading, listening and actually using the language.
That’s easy to correct by, say, adding one daily listening task to your self-study program.
Read the questions.
Listen to the text.
Listen a second or third time, if necessary (it probably will be.)
Scroll down to the bottom of the page to check your answers.
If you have time, listen again, but this time with the transcript.
And if you STILL have time, read the transcript a second time, checking anything that wasn’t clear, looking up difficult words, and so on.
To squeeze every last drop of goodness from the free tasks, you could make a note to come back to them in 24 or 48 hours time and listen to them again.
It’s amazing how this helps consolidate what you’ve learnt (try if for yourself!)
And, while you’re at it, why not copy and paste the URLs of the exercises you’ve done, along with the date and any comments, and make a note in your diary to come back to them one final time when a month or so has passed?
Then, in a month, you just have to click the link you saved to listen again and refresh your memory!
Habits, people.
Get into them, and the learning will take care of itself.
OK, here are those links I promised you:
Italian Demonstrative Adjectives
Oh, and for more listenings like these?
Visit our site and click on the Listening icon or link.
Matt’s working down the alphabetical list, adding exercises where necessary.
But you can go straight to material already grouped for your level:
Buono studio.
A lunedì!