How To Learn Italian

Now that you've decided to learn this beautiful language, you may be wondering where to start. After all, learning a language like Italian is both an amazing and challenging process that requires plenty of dedication, motivation, and helpful learning tools.

Here at Rocket Languages, we'd like to help you on your Italian learning journey. We'd like to provide you with a step-by-step guide on how to learn Italian the best way possible.

Andiamo!

Resources for further reading:

- Perfect your Italian pronunciation

- What you need to know to learn Italian

Step 1: Make a Game Plan

No great achievement ever happens overnight, and learning Italian is no different. The first step to learn Italian is to make some smart, realistic goals to help yourself organize your time and plan your studies.

Here are a few tips:

Make SMART Goals

Your New Year's Resolution may be to "learn Italian," but what does that actually mean? Vague final goals like this are both frustrating and unproductive. After all, how will you know when--and if--this goal is ever achieved? Instead, try making some SMART goals.

SMART goals, as advocated in world of management, are Specific, Measureable, Attainable, Relevant, and Time-Bound. In order to best apply this concept to your Italian studies, it's recommended that you become a little familiar with the European Common Framework that defines the different language levels.

Here's a brief breakdown of the framework and levels:

Level Group	Group Name	Level	Level Name
A	Basic User
		A1	Breakthrough or Beginner
		A2	Way Stage or Elementary
B	Independent User
		B1	Threshold or Intermediate
		B2	Vantage or Upper Intermediate
C	Proficient User
		C1	Effective Operational Proficiency
		C2	Mastery or Proficiency

On average, many speakers are considered "fluent" in a language by the time they've reached a B2 level or higher, a level which allows them to comfortably interact in almost all social situations.

Aiming for a B2 level of a language is therefore a more specific and results-focused goal, and thanks to the criteria provided by the Common European Framework of Reference, it's also measurable. It's much more attainable than aiming for the vague notion of "fluency" (which, seems to elude even fluent speakers!). It can easily be made time-bound by keeping in mind the criteria needed for each level and making yourself a schedule with your goals in mind.

Make a study plan

Now that you have some realistic goals in mind, it's time to make a study plan. A study plan will help you to organize and maximize your time, keep motivated, set goals, and make sure your brain gets the repetition and structure it needs.

Consider it your very own, personalized plan of attack.

Before you can make a great plan, however, there are four things you need to keep in mind:

1. How much time you can dedicate to learning Italian. You should ideally set aside a little bit of time to study Italian every day, although this time may vary. Even just 10 minutes a day can be helpful, but keep in mind that the more time you can dedicate, the better.
2. You Italian learning goals. Would you like to dedicate an equal amount of time to all language learning skills? Or are you more interested in speaking and listening than reading and writing? If you plan to prioritize some skills over others, make sure to incorporate this into your plan.
3. Your deadlines. This also plays a major role in determining how much time you should dedicate to learning. If you need to learn Italian as fast as possible for an upcoming trip or move, then you will need to dedicate as much time as possible to learning the language.
4. Your resources. What resources do you have available? Fortunately, we have more Italian learning resources at our fingertips than ever before. Take advantage of as many resources as possible when making your study plan. The more interactive and fun, the better!

With this in mind, you're ready to make your personalized study plan. Here's what it should include:

• A detailed description of each activity.
• Start and stop times for each activity.
• A description of the skill(s) you are practicing.
• As many fun, varied and motivating activities as possible.

Try and make sure your learning time is free of distractions and your workspace is organized. Schedule short breaks to keep yourself motivated when you're in the middle of long study sessions. Most importantly, have fun with it!

Step 2: Start with Sounds

Once you have a realistic, smart plan for approaching language study, it's time to dig in and start to get your hands dirty.

But where should you even begin?

The answer is simple: sounds. Learning how to hear, pronounce and spell Italian sounds is a great place to get started even before you begin memorizing words and their meanings.

Unlike English, the consistency between written and spoken Italian is rather high, which means that learning how to write and read in Italian guarantees that you’ll be able to master the spoken language. It’s still a good idea to get familiar with Italian sounds before moving forward to the second stage and studying writing.

Standard Italian contains 7 oral vowels, but it only has 5 different letters for all these sounds. Crazy right? But don’t freak out, it’s just a matter of studying a little bit, listening to a ton of Italian, and repeating the sounds until your tongue hurts.

Spend some time just focusing on Italian sounds and spelling so that they are longer foreign to you.

Study the Italian alphabet, work on identifying the letters and pronouncing all of the sounds that differ from English sounds.

Get started by trying to pronounce A, B, C, D and E!

See the whole Italian alphabet here. You can also listen to pronunciation guides on YouTube, watch movies or series with subtitles in Italian and read along to learn to recognize and repeat sounds.

Step 3: Learn Some Basic Vocabulary

The next step is to start recognizing and memorizing vocabulary words. There are several great tips for making the best of your vocabulary learning:

Keep it Practical

Learning Italian requires learning a lot of new words. There's no way around it. Lo Zingarelli, one of the biggest and most renowned dictionaries of the Italian language contains about 145,000 words and over 380,000 definitions. Do you need to know them all? Of course not! Don’t waste your time learning words and phrases that you'll never use.

Many experts believe that 300 words may be enough to carry on everyday conversation in Italian, which means that very little memorizing will do the work.

That's right, only 300 words!!

So what does that mean for you as an Italian learner?

By learning the 300 most common Italian words first, you can cut your work in less than half. You'll be able to communicate faster and with significantly less effort. However, it’s highly recommended that you expand your vocabulary at least to the 1,000 most commonly used words in Italian. With just 1,000 words, you'll be able to understand about 80% of written texts.

Here are some of the most common Italian words to get you started:

Note that you should study Italian greetings, numbers, basic travel questions, how to tell time, the 6 Italian pronouns and the most practical Italian verbs as soon as possible to help get you started.

Learn practical vocabulary first, and save yourself lots of time and effort!

Your Friends Cognates

Believe it or not, you already know some Italian words even before you even start studying it. While Italian may seem like "Greek" to you, the majority of foreign languages actually share some words or roots of words. These words that look or sound like words in your language and have the same meaning are called cognates.

Almost all European languages share countless cognates with English thanks to their shared roots, history, and evolution. Take the English words "identification," "attention," and "direction," for example. These words exist in Italian with a very similar spelling and just a slightly different pronunciation: identificazione, attenzione, and direzione.

These cognates are your friends and can make your language learning much easier and faster.

Here's a handy list of Italian words by letter that you already know thanks to cognates:

Step 4: Dive into Grammar

Now that you've got the Italian sounds down as well as some basic vocabulary, it's time to start tackling grammar.

Don't worry! We'll help make it as easy and fun as possible.

Here are a few things that can help:

Keep it Practical and Live in the Present

Just like with vocabulary, it's important to make sure you learn the most practical Italian verbs first. These are the verbs that you use the most in your everyday life. Instead of plunging into all of the different and complicated conjugations, make your life easier by learning the present tense first.

Start by learning the present tense of the four most practical Italian verbs: essere (to be)

• Io sono
• Tu sei
• Lui/lei è
• Noi siamo
• Voi siete
• Loro sono

fare (to do)

• Io faccio
• Tu fai
• Lui/lei fa
• Noi facciamo
• Voi fate
• Loro fanno

andare (to go)

• Io vado
• Tu vai
• Lui/lei va
• Noi andiamo
• Voi andate
• Loro vanno

avere (to have)

• Io ho
• Tu hai
• Lui/lei ha
• Noi abbiamo
• Voi avete
• Loro hanno

Then, start to learn the patterns for the regular Italian verbs. Some of these verbs include:

Break Down the Grammar

Grammar provides the rules for the game in a language. It helps us tell a story. While Italian grammar may seem complex, it can actually be broken down into three basic operations:

• Adding words (You are learning Italian > Are you learning Italian?)
• Changing existing words (I learn Italian > I learned Italian)
• Changing the order of words (Italian is fun> Is Italian fun?)

That's it. That's not too bad, right? Keeping this in mind, we can use the grammar explanations we learn to help us break down the rules into easily memorized chunks.

When studying verb tenses, for example, practice saying the same sentence using every different pronoun in the same tense. Then, practice changing the sentence into a negative sentence and into a question. Later, you can then practice saying the same sentence in different tenses with the same pronoun, in the negative form, in the question form, etc. You can even make your own flash cards to help you with this.

This is a great way to break down rules and make them easier to memorize.

Step 5: Practice, Practice, Practice

Finally, the cliché saying that "practice makes perfect" has never been more true than in the language learning world. Learning Italian involves a lot of practice, but there are a few great tips to practice without even needing a passport.

Read, Watch, Listen

Movies, music, television series, books, newspapers, magazines and anything you can read, watch, or listen to are unbelievably useful for learning.

Reading, watching and listening has a remarkable effect on your brain. Simply by being exposed to Italian, your brain is put to work. It starts trying to understand new words by making connections to previously learned words and seeks to make sense of any new structures. Basically, you're learning without feeling like you're learning. After a while, you'll find yourself using Italian words and constructions that you didn't even study thanks to your brain's ability to soak up vocabulary and grammar while reading a book or watching a series.

One word of warning, though: if you really want to get useful grammar and vocabulary, make sure that what you're reading, watching or listening to is modern and in a dialect that you would like to learn.

Interact... Without Needing to Travel

Try to interact in Italian on a daily basis. This can involve:

• Speaking with a Italian-speaking friend, family member or neighbor in person
• Writing a letter to a friend, family member, or coworker in Italian
• Writing a letter in Italian to yourself or keeping a journal in Italian
• Visiting a local store or neighborhood where Italian is spoken and interacting with the locals
• Joining a weekly, monthly Italian conversation group, or starting your own group!
• Speaking Italian online with a friend, family member, coworker, or fellow language learner
• Writing an email in Italian
• Contributing to a blog or forum in Italian (Rocket Language has some great forums for this!)
• Singing along with Italian music
• Watching a Italian movie or series and repeating the character's lines (you can use Italian subtitles to help)
• Reading a passage from a Italian book, newspaper, or magazine out loud
• Talking to yourself in Italian (this really works!)

Make Mistakes

Unlike other academic subjects, learning Italian is a continuous, never-ending adventure that requires constant practice. Don't live in fear of making mistakes.

In the language learning world, mistakes are a sign of progress. Mistakes help you to learn faster. Don't worry about upsetting native Italian speakers for being too "bold" and trying to speak with them in their native language. Don't worry if you say something that sounds a little strange. Just go for it!

Odds are, they'll love it and want to help you. Don't let fear get in your way. Interact in Italian as much as possible, and you'll be amazed by the results.

No matter what, make sure to keep your studies fresh and fun. You'll stay motivated and learning Italian will be faster, easier and more enjoyable than you expect!

In bocca al lupo!

Maria DiLorenzi: Rocket Italian