What I would do

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Buondì.

There was a good response to my call for club members’ input on last week’s article. Some people emailed (despite me asking them not to…) but most heeded the call to comment on the article, which was pleasing.

Pleasing because that way club members can read what other club members have to suggest, not just what I wrote. Reading the comments section can be a lot of fun, too. If you didn’t, read the article first, then scroll through the comments section, which you will find here. It’s not too late to add your own two pennies’ worth, either.

All that said, while I was delighted that so many people participated, and even though the number of members participating was still a fraction of a fraction of one percent of the total, I can’t say I was overly impressed with some of the suggestions for Chris.

Club members’ recommendations mostly went along predicatable lines, such as:

1.) Buy this (expensive) product – it worked great for me!

2.) Watch Youtube videos

3.) Study dialogues and practice them with your wife

Part of last week’s article covered how a teacher might find out a student’s needs, then decide whether their expressed goal was feasible or not, and advise accordingly.

Here’s a reminder of what Chris emailed two Saturdays ago:

“My wife and I are traveling to Italy in Late Sep 2024.
Do you offer a good method/process for us to learn Italian together and speak it around the house??”

What jumps out at me, as a professional language teacher, is, above all, the time limitation.

June, July, August and half of September are not long to, as Chris puts it, ‘learn Italian’. With part-time study, we could expect half a level of progress, perhaps.

Sure, that’s a heck of a lot better than nothing, but that’s a best case scenario.

Poi, the focusing on ‘speaking’ is a red flag. Everyone wants to express themselves, because that’s what we do in our mother tongues. But in reality, ‘speaking’ is neither an easy goal, nor one which is quick to attain.

The CEFR Self-assessment checklist (.pdf) divides ‘speaking’ into two parts, the second of which is ‘Spoken production’, which is what most club members (and probably Chris) had in mind.

The description for the FIRST LEVEL OF SIX, which we would normally regard as easily reachable in an academic year of part-time study – say one weekly evening class, plus a homework task to complete – goes like this:

“I can use simple phrases and sentences to describe where I live and people I know.”

Pretty limited, huh? Check out the A2 (end of second academic year) descriptor for ‘Spoken production’:

“I can use a series of phrases and sentences to describe in simple terms my family and other people, living conditions, my educational background and my present or most recent job.”

And the B1 (end of third year of evening classes) goal:

“I can connect phrases in a simple way in order to describe experiences and events, my dreams, hopes and ambitions. I can briefly give reasons and explanations for opinions and plans. I can narrate a story or relate the plot of a book or film and describe my reactions.”

OK, now we’re motoring! That sounds like more than adequate for a holiday in Italy. But you see why I was worried about the time Chris had available?

More importantly though, there are also the other ‘speaking’ descriptors to consider, and this is where the ‘learn from a book, practice with my wife’ thing parts company from reality.

The other category of descriptors is called ‘Spoken Interaction’, and the A1 ‘can do’ statement is, I’m sure, much more what Chris would have had in mind:

“I can interact in a simple way provided the other person is prepared to repeat or rephrase things at a slower rate of speech and help me formulate what I’m trying to say. I can ask and answer simple questions in areas of immediate need or on very familiar topics.”

Read the A2 and B1 descriptors for yourself, here (.pdf)

‘Spoken Interaction’ is what it says, so rather than the ‘expressing yourself’ of ‘Spoken production’, we’re talking actual conversation.

And in actual conversation, at any level, there’s a HUGE ELEMENT OF LISTENING (and a lot of just trying to get by…)

The CEFR’s A1 listening descriptor says:

I can recognise familiar words and very basic phrases concerning myself, my family and immediate concrete surroundings when people speak slowly and clearly.

which sounds like the minimum that would be required, don’t you think? Check out the A2 and B1 listening descriptors for yourself here: CEFR Self-assessment checklist (.pdf)

OK, so here’s what I would do if I was planning for a holiday in a country where I knew absolutely nothing of the language in just three and a half months time.

A lot of it is described in the article I referred Chris to, which didn’t seem to satisfy him: How to learn Italian (or any language)

Let’s take Arabic as an example. I know nothing of Arabic, apart from a few words used in Turkish, which I do know passably, but really isn’t similar at all.

So, hypothetically, if I was holidaying in Cairo or wherever in late September, I would:

1.) Find an online teacher and specify my goal to him/her. The goal would be A1 ‘Spoken interaction’ and A1 ‘Spoken production’, as quoted above. I would resist the teacher’s pleadings that I needed to begin with the alphabet, the grammar, and so on. If necessary I would sack him/her and find someone willing to listen to me. I want to SPEAK. I want to INTERACT. Once I’d found a friendly teacher who would talk to me in simple Arabic and stimulate me to reply, even with just ‘yes’ or ‘no’, I would do as many ‘lessons’ as I had time for before leaving on my trip.

2.) I would find online materials to learn very basic vocabulary in a phonetic way (no script, lots of listening), so greetings, numbers, food words, very basic verbs, functional language such as requests and apologies, and so on. I repeat, I’d need material that focused on listening to the words and phrases, as I’m not learning the alphabet.

3.) Moving beyond the level of discrete items, I would look for very basic listening materials, so dialogues, monologues, anything aimed at beginners or near-beginners, and I would practice until me ears hurt, or until I’d used all the free materials on the internet, whichever came sooner.

4.) Last, but absolutely, totally, not least, I would identify, memorise, and practice (with my friendly online teacher) essential phrases for managing conversations, such as ‘How do you say X in Arabic?’, ‘I’m sorry, would you repeat that?’ and so on, the goal being to take control of the ‘Spoken interaction’ so that I could attempt to guide any conversation away from failure, humiliation and despair, and towards actual communication.

Would this approach enable me to learn the language ‘properly’?

Certainly not. But maybe after my trip, if I’d had fun, I’d seek out a proper course and tackle the alphabet, the grammar, and other ‘essentials’.

By the way, the problem with learning and practising fixed dialogues (as in a book, or on our site) is that in real life any interaction is entirely unpredicatable.

For instance, there’s no point whatsoever in learning to say to a taxi driver “How much will you charge, my good man, to take me and my wife to the pyramids?” if you don’t understand the reply.

Which could be anything from the price you asked for to ‘Sorry, I’m heading the other way.’ In fact, even if the reply was about the price, there might be some negotiating involved. I expect there usuallly is.

So there’s a topic for my online teacher to work with me on, right there! Haggling. And interacting with a real person gets you used to that unpredictability, which is confidence inspiring, I assure you.

“How do you say YOU’VE GOT TO BE KIDDING ME! in Arabic?”

With a nice, friendly online teacher, a couple of weeks is a start, and in three and a half months (say 15 half-hour lessons) most people would be feeling much better prepared to use their new language on their travels.

When I was starting out with Swedish a number of years back, I had several online teachers and did more than a hundred hours of online one-to-one with them over a period similar to the one Chris describes. Then I went to Milan and took the Swedex A2 exam, which I aced with a 93% pass (the missing 7% was grammar, and some irrelevant vocabulary sets I hadn’t bothered with…)

There. Hope that gives you some ideas!

Comments on this article are welcome. Please don’t email me directly, as no one except me will read your wise words that way. To leave a comment on this article:

1.) Click through to this article on the club’s website.
2.) Scroll down to the bottom.
3.) Fill in the comments form. Your email address is required, but won’t be published or used for marketing purposes. Besides, if you’re reading this article IN an email, we already have it, right?

All genuine comments will be published, though that might take minutes, hours, or overnight. Be patient.

And of course, by clicking through to this article on the club’s website, and scrolling down to the bottom, you can also read what other club members have to say (if anything) and direct replies specifically to them if you wish.

Alla prossima settimana!

eBook of the Week, ‘La coscienza di Zeno’ (B1), £4.99

This week’s half-price eBook of the Week offer is a B1 (intermediate) ‘easy reader’ version of Italo Svevo’s self-published classic of Italian literature, ‘La coscienza di Zeno‘.

I’m not normally the sort of person that spends time on literature, still less read in a foreign language, but I have fond memories of this one, as I did a ‘mini book club‘ with it back in the first pandemic lockdown, which would have been more or less exactly four years ago, in June 2020.

At the time, I read the original, as did some other OnlineItalianClub.com members. It’s rather long, but the writing is accessible. Scroll though the comments on the ‘mini book club‘ page to find out how we got on… Or just go with our ebook easy reader, which will give you the idea (as well as lots of great reading and listening practice) in much less time!

Italo Svevo’s self-published 1923 novel takes the form of memoirs written by his protagonist, Zeno, a sick young man who is undergoing the new therapy of psychoanalysis and writing down his thoughts – on the instructions of his doctor, who later betrays him – as part of that process.

Follow poor Zeno as he explores his addictive personality, acquires a wife and later a lover, grieves for his dead father, fails at business, and eventually, many years later comes to the realisation that…

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Remember, this week ‘La coscienza di Zeno‘ is 50% discounted, so just £4.99 rather than the usual ‘easy reader’ ebook price of £9.99!

Buy La coscienza di Zeno‘ just £4.99! | Free Sample Chapter (.pdf) | Italian literature | World Literature | Catalog (shows ebooks organised by type, then level)

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P.S.

Did you read/listen to Tuesday’s FREE bulletin of ‘easy’ Italian news?

Yet again I didn’t get around to it, as I was at the hospital for a pointless ‘visita’, which took up a big chunk of the day.

But I’ll get to it today, or tomorrow, by which time there’ll be two to read/listen to. I prefer not to get behind.

Didn’t see it? You should subscribe. It’s FREE.

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