The best way to learn any language is to find ways to incorporate it into your daily life so that you can keep learning little by little over time. If you want to improve your Italian language skills, whether reading, writing, or speaking, you’ve come to the right place. In this post, I’ll share some of the easiest ways to begin improving your Italian Language right away. Learn more here about How to improve your Italian Skills on your own.
Languages are generally taught and assessed in terms of the ‘four skills:
- listening,
- speaking,
- reading,
- writing.
All language learners will need to develop their skills in each of these areas.
All four skills facilitate language learning.
Language learning is like learning to swim.
You can’t learn to swim by sitting by the river and reading a manual that shows you how to swim.
For this purpose, you will have a jump in the river.
In the same way, language can’t be learned by just cramming the rules of grammar from a book but you have to use it as much as possible.
What you will learn on this page:
How to Improve Your Listening Skill
How to Improve Your SPEAKING Skill
How to Improve Your Listening Skill
How to Improve Your Reading Skill
Below are some practical steps, you can take to develop these skills.
1. How to Improve your Italian LISTENING Skills
Knowing a bit about what you are going to listen to or read will help you better understand the material.
Before you start, try to find out a bit about the context or topic.
Here is a list of things you can do to improve your Italian listening skill
Here is a site with all the main Italian radio stations you can listen to online:
http://www.ascoltareradio.com/
Like reading, you’re simply absorbing information.
However, movies are enjoyable and if you have subtitles, you don’t need to have a pocket translator by your side.
Netflix has a large selection of foreign movies to choose from, as do Amazon Prime and iTunes.
Exploring the world of foreign films will broaden your cultural horizons and introduce you to colloquialisms you might not be familiar with to improve your Italian comprehension skills.
This is a great way of improving your understanding and fluency. The easiest way to learn Italian with music is to listen to and then analyse song lyrics.
FIND OUT MORE on How to use Italian songs to improve your Italian.
2. How to Improve your Italian SPEAKING Skills
Developing your Italian speaking skills will involve gaining fluency in spoken interactions with others, as well as practising your pronunciation to improve.
Use your new language skills as often as you can to speak to people.
Make a recording of yourself and listen back to try to identify your own strengths and weaknesses as a speaker.
Many large cities have cultural organisations that focus on a particular culture.
Seek out an Italian cultural organisation and attend some of their events.
You’ll make new friends and have an opportunity to practise your Italian and learn more about the language and culture.
Neighbours getting together to learn something, do something, share something…
Meetup makes it easy for anyone to organise a local group or find one of the thousands already meeting up face-to-face.
Google Meet and Skype can be great ways to connect with others who speak your Italian language and you can do it from home.
Use SKYPE or Zoom to talk to Italian native speakers
Best of all, it’s free and almost everyone nowadays has a Google account or uses Skype.
The Internet is an amazing language-learning tool, so use it to your advantage.
While there are many ways to measure your progress, unscripted speaking is by far the best test of your actual level in a language.
It doesn’t matter what device you use (smartphone, recorder), just make sure you do it at regular intervals.
Audacity® is a free, open-source, cross-platform software for recording and editing sounds.
Recording and uploading sounds to SoundCloud lets you easily share privately with your friends or publicly to blogs, sites and social networks.
3. How to Improve your Italian WRITING Skills
Writing is more complicated than it seems at first and often seems to be the hardest of the skills since it involves the development and presentation of thoughts in a structured way.
When writing in a foreign language, always try to think and write directly in that language.
Do not translate from a first draft. It is best not to use a dictionary too much in the early stages of writing.
Keeping a daily journal in the Italian language is a great way to improve your word-smithing skills while also measuring your progress over time.
The journal doesn’t need to contain beautiful, flowing prose. The only requirement is that you get words down on paper (or on the screen) on a daily basis.
Pick a Topic and WRITE!
Don’t get stuck on figuring out what to write about. You can write about anything. You can write about what you do, things you hear or see news, or make up a story.
4. How to Improve your Italian READING skills
Reading can help build a vocabulary that helps listening comprehension at the later stages, particularly.
It is important to make your listening and reading active rather than passively absorbing the content.
Reading aloud improves your pronunciation and silent reading focus comprehension.
This might be one of the easiest and most affordable ways to preserve your foreign language abilities.
Reading will help improve your vocabulary and teach you new phrases and ideas.
Make sure you have a dictionary or translation app nearby for those difficult words and phrases.
What’s next?
You might want to keep learning Italian online with these free resources:
Michael Robinson
I appreciate what you had to share here in regards to what is fluency and how someone becomes fluent in another language. It is interesting that you mention reading and writing as needed parts to become fluent. I have lived in Japan for quite some time and have become very proficient at Japanese, but I do not find myself fluent whatsoever. Thanks for the post!
Anna Italian Tutor
I think you need 4 skills to improve your language knowledge. Every skill can help another! Thanks for your reply.