The Best Way to Learn Italian

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by: RosannaLingard | Total views: 36 | Word Count: 442 | View PDF | Print View
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For most of us, learning a foreign language is quite a challenge. It has taken me several New Year's resolutions and a lot of research and determination to achieve the reasonably advanced level of Italian I've got now and I'd like to offer you a few shortcuts.

First of all, you need a teacher. Some teach-yourself courses are excellent (others less so) but, however good they are, it is extremely difficult to learn any language from scratch by yourself. These materials are great for extra support but they can't listen to you and pick up your mistakes in the way a teacher can.

If you want to know about science, maths or the history of art, books and lectures will take you a long way. It's not the same with a language: you learn a language best by speaking it. For this reason, you need a very small class or, even better, one-to-one tuition.

I attended an Italian evening class for about 18 months. I had fun and I made some new friends but I learnt very little. There were too many of us and most people didn't take it seriously, coming more for the social side than the actual study.

I looked around for another course and discovered a language school offering one-to-one Italian lessons. In the year I have been there, I've gone from lower intermediate to advanced and I'm overjoyed! It's so satisfying finally to be able to make sense of it all and have a real conversation. It may sound selfish but I love being able to ask as many questions as I like, without worrying that other people are getting impatient. Equally, when I understand, I love not having to wait for other people to catch up.

Apart from the fact that it's the most efficient way to learn, a one-to-one course is also much more convenient because you can arrange the lessons for times that suit you. With my childcare and work commitments, I really like this flexibility.

It's brilliant having the teacher to myself and nowadays we speak Italian almost the whole time I'm there. I've learnt to paraphrase and to be resourceful about making myself understood, which has given me confidence to start speaking even if I haven't rehearsed exactly what I'm going to say.

So this is my advice to you: stop wrestling with books and CDs on your own, bypass the big group and cut straight to one-to-one lessons with an experienced, native-speaking Italian teacher. I honestly wouldn't have imagined I could get this far - and you might just surprise yourself too!
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