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Buondì.
I’ve used the article title ‘Varie ed eventuali’ before, so have attached a ‘bis’ to it, which is useful if you want more of something – a second portion of pasta, an address for your garage conversion, a title for the new government formed from the ruins of the old government and headed by the same politician, etc.
Anyway, we have lots of bits and pieces to get through. For those of you who don’t live in Italy, and so don’t have to attend yearly condominium meetings, ‘Varie ed eventuali’ is usually the final point on the published agenda, like ‘Any other business’ in English. There are strict rules in Italian condominium law on what can/cannot be included, otherwise people would be ambushing their neighbours at the sleepiest point of the evening.
Point one: as last week and the previous ten, club members who have been following the FREE Summer Series of articles with audio should check out the final two episodes of the thirty-two-part series, which I published a few days back. Click this link, then scroll right down to the bottom of the page to find the now-completed series of articles.
Point two: the FREE Summer Series has now been published as an ebook, which isn’t free. At the end of this article there’s an ad for it. For the impatient you can view all five ebooks in the summer-series series here. The new one is discounted 25% (see below), the others aren’t.
Point three: next week I’ll be promoting the NativeSpeakerTeachers.com Autumn Sale, with emails every day (unless I get Bugged…) Club members who aren’t OK with that could stop reading for a week, or actually unsubscribe (ciao ciao, allora). Details of all this were sent out in an exceptional article on Monday. If you missed it, find it here: Summer Series Ebook -25% / Autumn Sale / Time to unsubscribe?
Point four: and at risk of this being all ‘ask, ask, ask’, this week EasyItalianNews.com is running its bi-monthly (every two months, not twice a month) appeal for donations. I’m the founder of EasyItalianNews.com and initially paid all its bills, but for the last few years those have been met by donations from readers. Sometimes it even turns a profit, which is nice.
The EasyItalianNews.com team is my wife (the editor), my eldest daughter (picture editor and formatting), my younger daughter (writes articles, when she has time), my son (does the audio recordings), and a handful of freelance writers. Stefi works for free, as do I – for instance now – everyone else gets an hourly rate. I’m a strong believer that kids should work, at least a little, and with three of them to put through college…
Back to the point, which is that EIN runs six appeals a year and people who recognise the value of the material and see that it’s helping them with their Italian may or may not choose to send a donation. That’s entirely optional, but if you’d like to help, you can do that here https://easyitaliannews.com/support-easyitaliannews-com/.
Or, if you’ve never used the site before, take a look, try reading/listening to a few bulletins, subscribe (it’s free), and perhaps I’ll catch you in November.
Point five? There isn’t one. By this stage of the meeting half of the ‘condomini’ who bothered to turn up in the first place have gone home for dinner, while the rest have turned bright red and are screaming threats of legal action at each other, and at the poor ‘amministratore condominio’, who has to do this every weekday evening…
Go find something useful to learn from, maybe. It’s raining here in Bologna, so I’m planning to put on my rubber boots, put in the ear buds, press play on ‘Nyheter från Ekot’ and go for a walk, so getting some exercise while preparing for my Swedish conversation lesson online at midday. I try to listen to Swedish every day, but absolutely, definitely, always do so before an online lesson or a conversation with an in-the-flesh Swedish person. It sort of ‘tunes in’ my brain, as well as providing topics to talk about.
There, that reminds me of point five, which is an extension of point three, actually. I reckon that about one-to-two percent of club members are also NativeSpeakerTeachers.com students, which isn’t bad. And a good chunk of club members will be taking lessons or doing courses elsewhere, or will have done in the past, which is also commendable. But the others?? Perhaps seventy or eighty percent of you?
It’s totally possible to learn Italian on your own, and without spending any money either. We provide plenty of FREE resources, and then there’s the whole Internet (not just Duolingo…)
However, and this is a big ‘however’, it’s hard, perhaps close to impossible, to get to the point when you can actually have a conversation, of whatever level of complexity, from simple to sophisticated, unless you actually get some practice interacting in the language you’re learning, in the same way that you do everyday in your native tongue.
‘Interacting’ doesn’t have to be with a native speaker, of course. You could do it perfectly well with another student, at a push. But for those who can afford it, practice time with a friendly native-speaker is the gold standard. The feeling of being ‘totally blocked, can’t say anything at all, how humiliating’ just melts away after a certain number of ‘lessons’.
How many? For me, it tends to be less than five half-hour slots, by which point I’m feeling comfortable and enjoying myself (I’ve done online lessons in Turkish, Swedish, French and Spanish).
Everyone is different, but assuming the teacher is competent (not all are), and assuming you focus on INTERACTING and don’t waste time with stupid grammar stuff that you could study on your own, then there’s no reason you couldn’t be chatting away much more confidently in Italian within a few months.
Online lessons with a native speaker aren’t free, of course. But for what I paid recently to have the fuel pump replaced in my twenty-year old Fiat Punto, you could get dozens of them! And while that automobile has its days numbered, I reckon that time and resources devoted to my own learning are likely to pay back, if not in money terms then at least in ‘life satisfaction’.
See point three for details of next week’s promotion on online lessons, which makes the whole thing a fifth more affordable (don’t buy now, wait for the coupon code on Monday).
For club members who don’t know where their next meal is coming from, invece, I’d suggest that – for now – you focus on building listening skills (see points one and four, plus click the Listening link on the club website). Listen better and speaking will come much more easily when your luck turns and you’re back in the money.
Gotta go walk in the rain. Don’t forget to UNSUBSCRIBE IF YOU’RE NO LONGER INTERESTED. Scroll down to the bottom of this emailed article and click the relevant link. I won’t be upset. Anzi.
Alla prossima settimana!
‘Dalla fine della Seconda Guerra Mondiale all’era di Berlusconi’ -25%
For those who have been following the free, 32-part Summer Series of articles + audio, this week EasyReaders.org has published the ebook version, Dalla fine della Seconda Guerra Mondiale all’era di Berlusconi, and at a 25% saving compared to their usual ‘easy reader’ price.
This is the fifth and final ebook in the ‘History of the Italian Peninsula’ series. View them all here.
This ebook version of a thirty-two-part series of articles with online audio walks students of Italian through some of the major events in Italy’s post-WWII history, from the horrors of war, via the economic boom, to the euro.
While the articles that make up this ebook are available for free at https://onlineitalianclub.com/history/, this version of the material (.pdf, .epub, .mobi) is easily printable (the .pdf version) and/or readable on an ebook reader, such as the Kindle (.epub or .mobi).
Please note: unlike our other ‘easy reader’ ebooks, for reasons of length 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
- 32 chapters to read and listen to!
- Suitable for students at intermediate level or above
- Download your Free Sample Chapters (.pdf)
Remember, this week ‘Dalla fine della Seconda Guerra Mondiale all’era di Berlusconi‘ is 25% discounted, so just £7.49 rather than the usual ‘easy reader’ ebook price of £9.99!
Buy ‘Dalla fine della Seconda Guerra Mondiale all’era di Berlusconi‘ (B2) just £7.49 | FREE sample chapter (.pdf) | View all five in the series | 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
How do I access my ebook?
When your order is ‘completed’ (normally immediately after your payment), a download link will be automatically emailed to you. It’s valid for 7 days and 3 download attempts so please save a copy of the .pdf ebook in a safe place. Other versions of the ebook, where available, cannot be downloaded but will be emailed to people who request them. There’s a space to do that on the order form – where it says Additional information, Order notes (optional). If you forget, or if you have problems downloading the .pdf, don’t worry! Email us at the address on the website and we’ll help. Also, why not check out our FAQ?
P.S.
And of course, don’t forget to read/listen to Tuesday’s bulletin of ‘easy’ Italian news, a fantastic, FREE way to consolidate the grammar and vocabulary you’ve studied, as well as to improve your Italian reading and listening comprehension skills!
Better still, subscribe (also FREE) and so get all three text + audio bulletins of ‘easy’ news emailed to you each week, on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays. Just enter your email address on this page and click the confirmation link that will be emailed to you.
Or visit their website and get started immediately!
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