Italian speaking practice and grammar tutoring
In fact, I checked my Mailchimp account before writing this post and saw that my very first newsletter was sent in 2015, on March 16th precisely. This means seven years of writing and sending email messages almost every week (the last one I sent was number 332, can you imagine?).
In fact, English has just one verb to express that concept, while Italian has at least three different verbs: uscire, lasciare, and partire. I have seen my students struggle a bit with that and I thought it could be useful to write a post about this aspect of the Italian language.
It was my first day at college and I was unpacking my suitcase when I asked my roommate “Scusami, dov’è la rumenta?”. She gave me a weird look and she told me she had no idea what I was talking about.
This is something that drives my students crazy and so I thought it could be another interesting topic for a blog post. As I always do for this type of post, I have also created a downloadable pdf file for you to keep for future reference.
But if this is your first time here, let me tell you a bit more about it. Basically, Pausa Caffè is a challenge to help you practice your Italian every day for a month.
As I always do when I select topics for this section of my blog, I have picked this specific aspect of the Italian language because I have noticed some of my students struggle with it a little bit, especially with the use of the conditional to express the future in the past.
I started the tradition of the Advent Calendar last year with a series of videos about the Italian traditions for Christmas: it was so much fun that I simply had to do it again. The topic I chose for this year is Italian verbs that could be used during the Christmas season.
And by doing so, I have noticed some recurring patterns: students tend to make the same mistakes and usually struggle with more or less the same grammar topics.
He is not a scholar nor has any knowledge of the language, he just finds that Latin is a more elegant and austere language than Italian so he throws Latin words here and there, in his conversation.
We have spent summer outdoors exploring and enjoying the sunshine but now it is time to curl up on the sofa enjoying a nice cup of coffee and practicing Italian!
