finding Italian very hard!

[slightlystressed]

I'm learning Italian at the moment, I go to one 2 hour lesson a week at the Uni.

I have been doing it a year (less all the Uni holidays) and am finding it very very hard, I'm the worst in my class!

Does anyone have any revision tips on how to learn and rememember what Im being taught at the lessons.

My DP is actually Italian (came to England age 3) but can speak it very well, but he doesn't like speaking it with me. How can I encourage him to speak it with me?

I am desperate to learn as really want the kids to have a good grasp of the language.

Your DP may find it really hard to 'switch' to speaking it with you. My only advice to increase his input is to set a 'date' night where you speak Italian together. You can pick and prepare a topic and talk about it with him. That way you learn a lot of new vocabulary AND practice spontaneous speaking.

2 hours, honestly, isn't really enough. You probably need to find some way to supplement your Italian input. Do you have Italian tv? Can you listen to radio on the web? Get an Italian magazine or paper to read?

To revise you need to speak. And write. And speak some more. I teach EFL and the hardest part is getting students to produce stuff in English. They need to use a word about 20 times in context before it even has a chance of sticking and practice grammatical structures out loud in a set way before moving on to using them spontanesouly. Create useful little phrases and say them repeatedly, then vary the phrase a little so if you're learning 'this is ..... but that is....' go round pointing out 'this is near to me but this is far from me', then vary to 'this is high up but this is low down'.

Oh thank you, never thought of looking for Italian radio, have just found it on net and am listening to Radio Uno!

My PIL have Italian tv, but you have to get seperate satelite dish and box, and Italian TV is BAD!! But when we move might pursuade DP to set it up for me.

Thanks for you're advice!

Si, é molto difficilé!

Agree with frakkin totally. When I was trying to reactivate my French I found a website with a news podcast that was read slowly with simple French, and a script underneath. I would play it a bit at a time and then repeat sentences to myself to get the language rhythm into my mind. I also found the BBC language website enormously useful - they have great videos and games which you can watch in sequence as a course or just whenever.

A friend of mine stuck post-it notes all round her flat when she was learning German with the names of furniture/implements. After a while she took them down but carried on saying the word to herself every time she saw it.

When I taught EFL I got the students to buy packs of index cards. They wrote an item of vocabulary on one side, along with relevant information - the associated preposition, or the word in a sentence. On the reverse side they wrote the word in their own language. They went through the index cards one by one when sitting, eg, on the tube in the morning. A more systematic way of doing that is with a five box system. All the cards start off in the first box. You look at an index card, if you know the word you move it into the second box. If you don't it stays in the first box. When all the cards are in the second box you go through them again, if you know a card it lands in the third box, etc The goal is to get all the cards in the fifth box, because you have remembered all of them five times. This system is amazingly effective for remembering vocabulary.

Buy Italian magazines (Grazia?) and try to read those - things like recipes are quite easy to work out.

Also buy Italian films on DVD with English subtitles - you need to hear the language in context. Radio is very hard work IMO.

Oooh and if you have an iphone you can download apps.

When i learned spanish i found it really helpfull to work out how differently they phrased their sentences. (they use reflexive tense whereas we would use passive, they say thinks like me falta (i need but literally it is lacking to me). Once you get that you begin to think in the different language and stop translating word for word. Good luck

2 hours is not enough, you have to 'live' it to learn it. Watch dvds in italian (maybe even kids stuff that's really simple) subtitles in any language often aren't exactly what they're saying anyway, and some things are so hard to translate they just write something completely different. I watched 'La vita e' bella' about a million times (because i love it!) in italian with english subtitles, english with italian ST, italian with italian ST etc, also you can pause dvds and look things up in a dictionary!

Radio is a good idea, they talk fast but it doesn't matter if you dont understand it, it just has to absorb subconciously.

'Italy' magazine has articles written twice in both languages.

I agree that italian tv is a pile of shite but it does help.

Never think about 'why' something is the way it is, and don't literally translate into english, you have to think italian.

As for your DP does he have italian speaking friends? mixing the 2 together is not recommended but it might get him used to it if he drops in the odd word here and there to test you?

And remember kids don't just learn from their parents, italian speaking friends or child-minders have a big impact too. It's worse to teach mistakes as a non mother tongue.

Good luck!

I agree re DVDs. When I was learning Italian I watched films I was really familiar with like Dirty Dancing so I didn't have to concentrate on the plot and could focus on what they were saying.

You definitely need regular conversation, if your DP won't do it then maybe you could find a native speaker who will give you regular conversation - how about the PILs or would that be too weird?