learn italian

Sarò qui per un mese per migliorare il mio italiano, una buona esperienza ma le lezioni sono così dificile, e sembra che tutti conoscano più di me. Gli italiani sono molto gentili, però anche se io parlo loro nell’italiano mi rispondono nell’inglese, è veramente ovvio che non sono italiano, ma ho credeva che io posso parlare abastanza bene. Così è dificile di trovare buon opportunità di practicare, ma colpa mia. Ancora proverò.

I’m finally moving forward on this—I have a date picked out (September) a place (Rome) and a school (http://www.clidante.com/) This week I’ll make sure its good with work, then I’ll enroll & buy a plane ticket.

Radio Rai has several chanels of streaming audio, I listen to it almost daily. It’s fun to see how much more I understand now than when I first started. If you’re having trouble finding the streams, remember that ascoltare means to listen.

http://www.radio.rai.it/

Also La Repubblica has some channels of video, almost all the links on this page are video: http://repubblicaradio.repubblica.it/home_page.php

Well, studying is going great! I’m making steady progress with the tutor I see once a week, and still enjoying it. No progress on planning a trip though. The date I set is coming a lot faster than I realised, I may have to move it back a month.

I’m almost done with the book I’ve been going through and will probably need another intermediate level one. Has anyone used any textbooks in particular that they were happy with?

I’ve used “Oggi In Italia” for a first semester course I took about a year and a half ago.
Currently I’ve used “Italian Made Simple” which is kind of a self-teaching workbook. Not bad, but it’s missing quite a bit of essential grammar. Plus it has mistakes in it!

There wasn’t enough depth in just listening to audio programs. They teach you phrases and vocabulary, but to learn a language you need to know the nuts & bolts of the grammar that the words hang on.

I’m trying to plan a trip to Italy soon to take some intensive language courses, there’s a myriad of schools in Italy that will teach you italian by imersion which is the express route to learning a language.

Here’s some list of programs I’ve found:

http://listings.studyabroad.com/sab_tango/sab_lang2.taf?language=Italian&break=Florence

http://www.clidante.com/english/courses_p.html

http://www.a2zlanguages.com/siena.htm

http://www.linguaserviceworldwide.com/italian.htm