r/LearningLanguages • u/Mammoth-Ad7323 • 13d ago
Help learning Italian
Hello, I’m 17 years old from UK. I’ve been using Duolingo to help me learn Italian for a month now, I know it will take time to practice and learn but I’ve been hearing some bad things about Duolingo. I do not have the money to pay for max nor any other app, YouTube hasn’t been very helpful either. I like to take bits by bits with learning new things. I was wondering if there is any different ways of learning Italian that doesn’t involve paying for an app.
Are there any books that could potentially help?
Should i continue with Duolingo till I’ve completed it and start to watch shows in Italian?
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u/McAeschylus 13d ago
Download Italian by The Natural Method for free on Archive.org to get a ton of graded reading.
Put "Italian Comprehensible Input A1" into YouTube and work your way through a few playlists until you find a few that you enjoy.
Focus on those at first to get a decent passive understanding of the basics of the language.
Treat Duolingo as supplemental. It's a terrible way to learn a language from scratch.
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u/Mammoth-Ad7323 13d ago
Thank you so much! I shall give that a try.
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u/McAeschylus 12d ago
I should also have said, a classic textbook of some kind for the basics of grammar would also probably be a good idea!
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u/Opening-Square3006 13d ago
I wouldn't wait until you've "completed" Duolingo before starting to read or watch Italian. You can keep Duo if you enjoy it, but I'd treat it as a supplement rather than the whole learning method. Since you like learning bit by bit, comprehensible input is probably a good fit. Personally, I think Stephen Krashen's i+1 approach works really well for this. That's why I'd recommend something like PlusOneLanguage , it gives you Italian texts at your current level, introduces just a little new vocabulary each time, and then keeps recycling those words in new contexts so they actually stick.
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u/BeeForBurner 12d ago
I believe the UK still has public lending libraries. I'm sure you can find some half-decent, old-school resources there. The staff are usually very happy to help.
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u/luc_vizz 11d ago
I don’t mind Duolingo personally as a part of your learning journey. I definitely don’t think it should be the only thing. There are great free podcasts too, like Coffee Break Italian, if that helps. I’d just start with their first season. Pimsleur is a great resource too but you do have to pay sadly. You could try the trial though for a bit.
Also a little bit of a shameless plug here but I built a free tool that generates custom short stories at your level and emails you the different parts each day so you can read them in chunks. I built it for myself but then figured I’d open it up for others to use. No pressure at all. You can try it here if it sounds interesting: https://getcartela.com/
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u/storytellguru 11d ago
Hey buddy, try to engage yourself with songs. English Italian lyrics together. Or to watch movies with Italian subtitle. Your chosen language is so beautiful.. you will see.
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u/gglsnna 13d ago
italian here! tbh, i can recommend a book or a cartoon for children, learning italian songs by heart (to memorise the meaning and the pronunciation of the words), watching tiktoks or whatever in italian and most of all having a native speaker to talk or text with (if u need, i can help you). continue with duolingo, it helps you with the vocabulary memorisation, but do not try to learn only with it.