Beginner’s guide to learning Italian successfully – Part 1

Learning Italian as a beginner can be a highly rewarding and inspiring venture, or it can be a frustrating and miserable affair. Whether you enjoy studying Italian or not, depends mostly on your attitude, expectations and learning technique.

In this Guide to Learning Italian I will reflect my own experiences as a successful language learner and teacher. Here, in Part 1, I’ll give you five tips that will help you learn efficiently in the short, medium and long term. My focus is on helping you gain motivation, self-discipline, stay focused, and persevere in your goals.

5 tips on how to learn Italian efficiently:

Find an Italian course you like and stick to it. Don’t be tempted to get any old course, the cheapest one, or even the most advertised one, before checking what they look and sound like. Getting a course YOU like is essential to your success.

Have fun while you learn. Combine your Italian language course with other activities like reading comic books in Italian, watching movies with subtitles, listening to music in Italian, surfing the web in Italian, or even playing the Italian version of your favorite computer games.

Be realistic about your expectations. Learning a language takes time, and there are no miracle learning techniques, although some courses are much better than others. Expect to forget a lot of what you learn the first time around, it’s normal. Also, progress is rarely steady and you’ll find yourself learning a lot more some days than others.

Learn at least one new word in every session. Studying a foreign language is a psychological game and the feeling that you’re getting somewhere is essential to keep you going. Often you’ll realize you’ve forgotten more than you’ve learned and you’ll need to go back, that’s why small and tangible achievements (even if it’s only learning one or two new words) are so important for your motivation.

Establish what your long-term goals are and focus on them. If you’re learning Italian to be able to speak to people and understand them, those are the skills you should focus on, rather than reading or writing. Always get a course that emphasizes the aspects of the language you’re interested in. What’s more, get a course that focuses on the topics you’re interested in: a course for travelers, business people, those planning to settle in Italy, for children, etc. This is a great way to keep up your motivation.

In Part 2 of this Guide to Learning Italian I will give you more tips on how to learn the language successfully.

If you’re looking for Italian language courses for beginners in book format, on cd, software, mp3, dvd, video, audiomagazine, etc., you can find a vast range at the best prices at Italian Bookworld.