Italian speaking practice and grammar tutoring
Back in February, I launched a challenge to help people overcome their fear of speaking Italian. It was called Pausa Caffè and it required participants to answer an Italian question a day for a month.
For the first time since I opened the blog, I have a guest writer. I really love writing posts for the blog, it’s probably one of my most favorite activities, so I never thought of asking someone to be my guest.
As I said in that blog post about ci, the use of these two particles in Italian can be a bit frustrating, so I am writing these blog posts hoping to help students who struggle with this aspect of Italian grammar.
I really think that my English could be way better and that I should work harder to improve it. However, a question that I get quite frequently is “How did you learn English?” and I thought that maybe I could answer it by writing a post about my experience with this great language.
I have noticed that some of my students have a hard time with how to use ci and ne properly because – let’s admit it – they are a bit tricky, so I have decided to write this blog post to see if I can make things easier for people struggling with this topic as well.
The goal of the challenge was to get people to speak a little Italian every day, in order to help them improve their speaking skills and their self-confidence. In fact, many students not living in Italy have multiple opportunities to work on their reading, listening, and comprehension skills but not very many chances to speak the language.
Two weeks ago I wrote a blog post focusing on the Italian nouns that derive from books and theatre plays, today I am exploring the same topic but with a focus on adjectives.
I couldn’t sleep, a few nights ago, and I started thinking about our (ex)Prime Minister – not exactly the right thought to go back to sleep, I know – and I said to myself: “È proprio un azzeccagarbugli“. This weird word comes from Alessandro Manzoni’s I promessi sposi and made me think of all the Italian words that have similar origins.
I have seen many students struggle with this topic. In some cases, they were even advanced students who could use the congiuntivo quite confidently, for example, but would still stumble upon the choice of when to use imperfetto or passato prossimo.
I cannot tell you how many times I have heard this sentence. This is what a lot of people tell me when they contact me for speaking practice but it is also what I am told by my students and what I read in comments and messages here and there.
