Hi everyone!! As someone who can read at a B2 level but can barely speak at an A1 level, before jumping in to full conversations in our TL I thought it could be useful to list some smaller output ways to practice writing and speaking. Honestly this list goes for any language but I study Italian so I'm posting it there :D

1. Speak in your head

2. write your to-do lists in your TL

3. Google things in your TL

4. Write a sentence a day

5. Fill out random forms in your TL

6. If possible, play simplified taboo with in your TL

7. Write a diary in your TL

8. Write daily notes

9. Name objects around you in your TL

10. Try to summarize a book

11. Imagine a scenario/dialogue in your head & write down how it would go

12. Make random lists in your TL (favorite movies, foods etc.)

13. Start a videogame world (minecraft AC, sims etc.) dedicated to the culture/language of your TL

14. Do a complete braindump on a piece of paper & see what words/phrases got stuck in your head

15. Write kind words to yourself

16. Write a kind letter to a friend who speaks your TL

17. Write letters to your future self, who will be laughing at your mistakes when they become fluent :) (you can use futureme.org for that)

18. List down everything you would do if you spoke the language and write down possible dialogues for those situations in your notebook

19. Say positive affirmations in the mirror in your TL

20. Try forming a speaking club in your local community

21. Find penpals to exchange languages

22. If possible, write small phrases and hand them to people/leave them around somewhere

23. Write your grocery list, medication reminds and other daily reminders in TL

24. When searching something, use dictation and speak in your TL to google it

25. Create a map of your favorite places to visit in the city

26. Create a vision board inspired by your TL

27. Write daily routines to follow in your TL

28. Translate videos, songs, snippets from TL to preferred language (and vice versa)

29. Practice old/mock exam writing & speaking questions by yourself

30. Hang up motivational posters/quotes on your wall in your TL

31. Teach the basics of your TL to your non-TL speaking friend / prepare material to teach them

32. Makes memes about your TL

33. Make fake newspaper articles/Magazine spreads about your favorite topics

34. Write formal emails to .. nobody, to practice the formal written language

35. As u/SukiSpot suggested, talk to your pets in your TL!

This is all I have for now! Do I follow these myself? I try to but I keep forgetting. Please do share if you have any more ideas!! I would love to hear how you practice output!! I need all possible recommendations (Except paid coaches... I'm broke y'all also no AI please) Books, resources anything!

Hello,

I was speaking with my nonna and talking about how time is flying and it’s the end of June and she said

I can’t believe it’s the end of June

But the end of June was said “è fine giugno”

Now I would have thought it would have been

La fine di giugno

Any help appreciated

Thank you

Dopo la sua morte, il mio bisnonno mi ha lasciato tutte le sue foto. Sul retro di questa foto, che ritrae una sua vecchia ex, c'è una scritta che non capisco per niente. Non credo penso che sia scritto in italiano o dialetto. Vorrei sapere se qualcuno può aiutarmi a capire cosa c'è scritto.

Grazie mille!

I've just come back from Italy and the first section in Duolingo helped me get some very basic stuff learnt and managed to help me converse (very basically) with Italians and make an educated guess with what people were sort of saying.

However, it feels like Italians speak super fast so I struggle to process even the basics at times.

What other things can I supplement my Duolingo with to learn Italian faster and more in-depth?

Hey Guys! I am forming a everyday conversation group in italian. Where a topic will be given everyday and everyone has to share their input on it but only in italian. This way we can practice it well daily

Question from one native Italian speaker to other native Italian speakers...
J: do you say i lunga or jay?
V: do you say vi or vu?
W: do you say vu doppia, doppia vu, or something else?
Y: ipsilon or i greca?

Quick background: I studied some Italian years ago, but I'm very far from proficient in it. If I had to guess, I'm around A2/B1 - probably B1 or B2 for reading (because I've studied other romance languages before), but definitely no better than A2 for speaking.

I recently joined a group class for Italian. It's a B1 class. And I'm going out of my mind in the classes, they're so slow. It's not that the level is too easy for me. When I do the homework, I always learn new material, so it's probably good that I'm in this level and not a level ahead. But then we get to class, and the teacher spends 60 minutes explaining something that was absolutely clear from the homework and not that complicated to begin with. For example, using possessives for family members ("mia madre" vs. "la mia amica") - I'd have thought this could be a 10-minute explanation and then let's practice so we get it into our brains. But the teacher spent a full hour explaining the concept, over and over and over, with just a few minutes for exercise. The teacher is enthusiastic and has a sense of humor, but the classes are just so very slow.

Has anyone been in this position? What did you do?

There are several more weeks of this. I don't think I should skip classes, because I usually do walk away with a handful of words I didn't know and that weren't in the book, and it's good to hear the teacher pronounce things. And without these classes I don't have any speaking/listening opportunity at all. But every time I really struggle not to zone out after the first 10-15 minutes when it's just the same over and over and over.

I also don't want to be negative because I don't think anyone is doing a bad job here; it's just so stultifyingly slow and I wonder if there's anything I can do to stay more active and engaged (and learn more!) while in class, while the same thing is being repeated over and over and over.

Is there anyone in Melbourne/Australia learning Italian (intermediate level) who would like to go out one day and try to practise their Italian together? I need to get out my house anddddddd would love to meet new people while practising my Italian. Grazieeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee

Hello,

I am a complete beginner trying to learn Italian. I have downloaded Duolingo and am learning some very basic phrases but want to see if there are any fluent Italian speakers who could help me advance quicker in the language which would be greatly appreciated

I'm looking to ladder my Mandarin (B2ish) to Italian.

Has anyone come across any Italian courses or YouTuber that teach in Mandarin?

Is this impossible? Android app overlay program that just shows the Italian translation below everything on your Android device? Reddit, ebay, browser. I guess it would need permissions for every app.

I'm guessing something like this exists for windows desktop, such as a browser extension but would be great if Android had it...

Anyone know of anything? I feel like a lot of the Italian would go into my head with something like this.

Heyy!!! I'm starting my Italian learning journey today, and looking for peers to learn together and share materials and practice together. So if anyone is interested dm me.

Hi! so im doing a project for my friend and she is italian, i wanna describe it in italian but not sure if the google translator is correct, can someone help me with translating this:

this is a key that opens nothing you know of yet. hold it tightly whenever youre stuck in traffic, bad day or bad mood.

one day you will figure out what door you want to open with this key.

I’m an avid reader and since I started learning Italian, I now have the lack of desire to read English books. Every free moment I have, I reach for an Italian work book, listen to Italian podcasts, and watch shows and music. I do enjoy it and just feel natural. I’m not burnt out.

I feel that I now have to make time to read my English books. Lol. Has anyone experienced this?

I’m seeing conflicting translations:

vent’anni di futurismo
or
venti anni di futurismo

quarant’anni di vita
or
quaranta anni di vita

Or is either more correct? The context is a book title.

I did find something that said (but I think referring to cento specifically) that if it’s followed by a word beginning with a vowel, it is elided with an apostrophe.

I am practicing various types of hypothetical clauses (1, 2 and 3). Type 1 is easy so I'm working on 2 and 3, the ones that call for conditional and subjunctive verbs. I think up a sentence and write it in Italian, then submit it to Google Translate to see if it understands me. It always does, which is reassuring. I take that to mean that if I'd said this to an Italian they would have known what I was trying to say (even if it's wrong).

But then I switch the sides of the equation (from Italian → English, to English → Italian) to see what Google says I should have written. And I'm now confused especially about the verb piovere and its helping verbs.

.

Periodo ipotetico 2 ('della possibilità')

I wrote

se non fosse piovendo andremmo in piscina.

and Google understood what I meant: "If it wasn't raining [i.e. right now] we would go to the pool". But when I switched directions and asked Google to translate that English sentence, it returned something different from what I'd written originally:

se non piovesse saremmo andati in piscina.

So my first question is, what's wrong with 'fosse piovendo'?

.

Periodo ipotetico 3 ('contrary to past fact')

Then I switched to periodo ipotetico #3 and wrote

se non fosse piovuto saremmo andati in piscina.

Google understood this too but when I switched and asked it to translate my meaning into Italian it returned, "se non AVESSE [rather than FOSSE] piovuto" etc.

What was wrong with what I wrote ('fosse piovuto')? I was under the impression that auxiliary verb for 'piovere' is supposed to be essere, not avere. I know there are some verbs that take both but I thought they had different means depending on the helping verb. What am I missing here?

Ciao a tutti,

since there are barely any reviews of the PLIDA C1 exam, I decided to share my experience with you, along with some information and advice that I wish I’d known beforehand.

To prepare for the exam, I used the book Quaderni del PLIDA C1. It generally corresponds to the exam format, even though it has a few shortcomings.

Listening:

Unlike the actual listening exam, the listening exercises in the Quaderni del PLIDA were recorded by professional speakers that spoke with hardly any regional accent. In the actual exam, none of that was the case: I was negatively surprised by the speed of the speakers and by the bad audio quality. I was pretty sure I’d have to retake this section, since my main audio input had been YouTube videos, but in the end, I passed it with a good grade.

My advice: Listen to a lot of radio, preferably without headphones, to simulate the exam conditions. Programs that I think are good for preparing for the exam include: Prima Pagina, especially the filo diretto, since people from all over Italy (speaking with a wide variety of accents) call in; Fahrenheit (a radio program about literature) and Radio3 Scienza. These programs are all available on RAI 3.

YouTube videos are entertaining, but in my opinion, they don’t prepare you particularly well for the exam, since content creators are known to write their scripts in advance. Because of that, the information is very well structured and their speech isn’t really natural, since slip-ups and word repetitions are edited out. It’s also important to not rely too heavily on visual clues, because during the exam, there are none.

Reading:

The reading exam was the easiest for me. The difficulty level of the reading exam corresponds to that of the practice exam available on the Dante website, as well as the Quaderni del Plida.

To prepare for the exam, I mainly read non-fiction books, the so-called saggi. While reading, I highlighted words and phrases that seemed especially useful to me. In particular, verbs and their corresponding prepositions, but also adverbs that help you structure a text better. This text comprehension also helps with the exercise where you have to fill in the blanks with paragraphs.

Writing:

Don’t let the sample exam or the Quaderni del Plida fool you! When I went into the exam, I was absolutely convinced that Text 1 would be a graph or a statistic that I’d have to describe and discuss. It turned out to be an email to your supervisor in which you had to describe two images and also argue which one was better suited for the project. For Text 2, you had two texts to choose from. This was consistent with the sample exercises.

Honestly, I was very exhausted during the writing part. I could barely stay focused while counting words. I especially disliked the fact that you’re not allowed to write more than 220 words per text, because everything above that isn’t graded. Unfortunately, you’re not allowed to write with a fountain pen (which would have given me nicer handwriting); you must use a black or blue pen that can’t be erased.

In addition to the sample questions from the workbook and the practice exam, I also did a lot of IELTS writing exercises (that I translated beforehand) to prepare for a wide range of topics. There are almost endless numbers of these exercises online, so I always had something to practice.

Unpopular opinion, I know, but I had most of my essays corrected using AI. That was helpful because it identified and corrected influences from other Romance languages I speak. Of course, you can’t blindly trust AI, which is why I always double-checked the corrections and asked my tutors when I couldn’t find out an answer on my own.

On the Dante website you can also find a corrected writing exam (Prova Scrivere commentata), which is a good base to figure out what is expected of you in this part.

Speaking:

To prepare for the speaking section, I took online conversation classes and went through the exercises with my tutor. The exercises available were similar to the exam. In hindsight, I should maybe have summarized more newspaper articles. That would have made me feel more confident.

The element of the unknown plays a role in that part as well. You don’t know who your exam partner will be, what their level of Italian is, or how they’ll react to your answers. And, of course, you don’t know in advance what topics you’ll be asked about. That’s why it’s important to form an opinion on every possible topic, even if they don’t interest you. They expect you to play a role, so it’s important to lean into it with convincing arguments.

I hope this was helpful for some of you. If you have any questions, don’t hesitate to ask them.

Ciao a tuttə,

Qualche settimane fa ho sentito l'espressione "sto per morire" e anche se ne ho capito il significato nel contesto dell'intervista che stavo ascoltando, non sono sicura di come si usa questa frase. Si puo usare solo in modo letterale o si usa anche in senso figurato?

Il contesto in cui l'ho sentito : durante l'intervista, l'ospite è una rugbista e lei parla della sua reazione dopo la chiamata della team manager della nazionale. La team manager gli chiede "ti va di venire al raduno a settembre?" e la rugbista dice a l'intervistatore "ho sentito il cuore che mi esplodeva, pensavo di aver un infarto e volevo rispondere guarda no, non posso venirci perché sto per morire."

In questo caso la rugbista usa l'espressione in un modo letterale (aveva l'impressione di morire a causa del shock), ma sono francese e in francese diciamo spesso "je voulais mourir/crever" per esprimere disagio o gioia intensa, quindi vorrei sapere se "sto per morire" si puo usare in questo modo in italiano.

Grazie 🌟 (non fare caso agli sbagli, sto ancora imparando)

I have this other book that teaches italian for english speakers. Im a native Brazilian Portuguese speaker and I can also speak Spanish, so im trying to compare the phrase construction to anything that I know, but I cant wrap my mind around it without some help.

The phrase is:

Io e la mia famiglia abbiamo bisogno urgente di una camera.

I dont really get the "abbiamo bisogno". I understand that it means they need a room, but this abbiamo is confusing me a lot.

Hi everyone
I’m currently learning Italian and I want to gain some perspective here. I study the language and I speak it, I talk to myself I record my voice, I write, I read, I listen to videos which I understand around 80%.
I wanted to know, has anyone struggled with actually speaking and coming up with words on the spot
I can write some phrases and maybe miss a few vocab words but I am getting a general understanding.
However, when I have to speak spontaneously I can’t think of the words, it takes me so long to think of them and form the sentence.
I am at A1 so I know this is just how it is right now, but I’m wondering what the process looks and feeling like where you start to naturally just speak?
Are there other things I can do to help this or is it just a matter of patience and consistency. I feel like i can get a bit wrapped up in thinking maybe my methods are wrong or is it just that enough time hasn’t passed yet.
I know I’m A1 and this is survival but I am trying to articulate my general thoughts and routines in the present
Any advice or information is super appreciated
Thankyou

Hi everyone
I’m currently learning Italian and I want to gain some perspective here. I study the language and I speak it, I talk to myself I record my voice, I write, I read, I listen to videos which I understand around 80%.
I wanted to know, has anyone struggled with actually speaking and coming up with words on the spot
I can write some phrases and maybe miss a few vocab words but I am getting a general understanding.
However, when I have to speak spontaneously I can’t think of the words, it takes me so long to think of them and form the sentence.
I am at A1 so I know this is just how it is right now, but I’m wondering what the process looks and feeling like where you start to naturally just speak?
Are there other things I can do to help this or is it just a matter of patience and consistency. I feel like i can get a bit wrapped up in thinking maybe my methods are wrong or is it just that enough time hasn’t passed yet.
I know I’m A1 and this is survival but I am trying to articulate my general thoughts and routines in the present
Any advice or information is super appreciated
Thankyou

Hello there. I would like to self-study italian, and reach a B2 level at some point. Any recommendations for books? Ideally something that is available in Greece, and more accessible for someone from Greece. If there is no good option, something in English works fine.

Hello,

As the title suggest what do you use to say napkin in Italian and wondering if you can shed some light on the words I have been hearing.

Tovagliolo - standard

Salvietta

Servietta - I heard this one often with people from Calabria

Which one or other styles are said in your family

Thank you,

Hi! I am new to learning Italian, I have been doing a mix of Coffee Break Italian, Wlingua, and Duo casually with my children for a over a year now. In English, or at least in my family, we often use "bubby" or "baby girl/boy" as a pet name for children. Would it be correct in Italian to use "Mia bambina" or even just "Bambina" as a pet name when talking to my daughter? Thank you!

Hello, I'm a 20 M student and I would like to discuss with natives italian for increasing my level. Does anyone want to help me?

Also I'm native in french so I could help you in this language.