Learning Italian | How do you learn ITALIAN? Is it possible to learn ITALIAN independently?
If so, how?
These are questions that those who have started to learn a foreign language have asked themselves at least once, giving themselves a thousand different answers.
Those who begin to study a foreign language do so with the primary, and often only, objective of learning to speak the language well.
The desire is to be able to speak and hold a conversation with a native speaker in the shortest possible time.
It’s important to have the objective in focus, but it is also important to know the steps to be taken to achieve it.
Learning Italian | How do you learn ITALIAN?
Learning Italian is done by developing the four communication skills:
- reading
- writing
- listening
- speaking
These skills are divided into comprehension (reading and listening) and production (writing and speaking).
| comprehension | production |
| reading listening | writing speaking |
Here is a link to an in-depth study:
https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quadro_comune_europeo_di_riferimento_per_la_conoscenza_delle_lingue
Very often those who decide to learn ITALIAN on their own underestimate those skills.
Learning Italian | I can do it
At best, they buy a grammar book and follow the topics index, without asking themselves too many questions:
if it is written in the book, it will be right, won’t it?
After a long time spent studying those difficult rules and doing all the available exercises, the need to expand the vocabulary probably arises because you realize that you don’t have the words you need every time you have to write something.
So you buy fiction books suitable for what you think is the correct language level.
At this point it often happens that you understand a written text very well, find it easy (and therefore boring), do the reading comprehension exercises perfectly without any mistakes.
Then you try to listen to the audio and you get a feeling of frustration, almost disappointment in yourself:
” How is this possible? I have read the text, I have done the exercises perfectly, but if I try to listen to it I miss many words and I don’t understand it very well.”
“If I try to retell in my own words the things I have understood, the words get stuck in my throat and even if everything is clear in my head the sentences don’t come out.”
At this point you will already have studied a lot and spent a lot of energy doing all this work, but if you think about it carefully you have only worked on half of it, developing grammar skills, the ability to understand written text and perhaps even writing.
However, without having your work corrected (either automatically or by a teacher) it is difficult to know if there are mistakes in the texts you have written.
So the first thing to do when you start to study ITALIAN independently is to do things in the right order:
develop comprehension skills first, only then move on to production skills.
Studying by yourself is possible, but you need to know how to do it, how to make the most of all the free resources you can find on italianlesson.it
On italianlesson.it all the ITALIAN FREE RESOURCES are divided by language level and communication skills.
This selection of study material is normally difficult to do without the help of a teacher, but here you will have help.
Start by assessing your language level by individual skills, select the level you think is right for you and start looking for the right articles in the HOW TO section to see if you understand the real use of those hundreds of rules you have studied.
Italian | Free Resources
In the free resources section you will find complete exercises that allow you to read short texts and listen to them being read. You will always find a short vocabulary list of the words used in the text and below that you can have fun with interactive exercises that you can do and do again until they are perfect!
If you want to start learning Italian independently and have fun, you’ve come to the right place.
HERE ARE THE LINKS TO THE SECTIONS EXPLAINED IN THE ARTICLE:
ITALIAN GRAMMAR | HOW TO https://italianlesson.it/how-to/
FREE RESOURCES https://italianlesson.it/res/free-resources/
Have fun!