Coffee Break Italian Season 3 Advanced
Karri Pretty
The Coffee Break Languages series teach languages through podcast-style lessons. The lessons have a casual feel and offer lots of explanations, building on each other nicely. Courses are available for a one-time purchase, but much of the material is also available for free as podcasts or Youtube videos.
Mark appears again in this series, but this time as a student of German instead of a teacher. He instead invites native speaker Thomas to teach the language. Mark only knows a few words in German before starting with the podcast lessons, and this set-up works quite well.
The French lessons differ from the Italian and German in that there are four seasons instead of only two. These more advanced seasons make a viable option for learners that are beyond the lower-intermediate level and contain much more French.
The lessons in the first two seasons are made up of an audio lesson, accompanying notes, and a bonus audio lesson. The video provides visual accompaniment to the lesson and is something I found useful as a more visually-oriented learner.
The notes come in PDF format and are available for download. They provide detailed explanations of everything covered in the lesson, including practice questions with answers (as heard in the audio) and notes on the bonus audio.
The third season of Coffee Break French features lessons that are a little bit different in form. Instead of a dialogue centered around a specific language point, lessons are based around texts written by students of French. You have a chance to learn about three learners, who are all studying French in Nice, through diary entries they make about their experiences.
The translation exercises are fairly straightforward. The host will say a phrase in English and wait for listeners to try and translate it. He will then go over the correct translation and give explanations. The free podcast lessons include five phrases to translate, the premium version includes ten.
The lessons in the fourth season of the French series follow four different fictional characters. Listeners learn about these four characters through a series of emails, one of which is the focus of each lesson.
In the main lesson audio (available for free), a native speaker reads an email at normal speaking speed. After listening at full speed and getting the gist of the email, the hosts break it down line-by-line.
You can also follow along with the transcript while you listen or use it to check your understanding later. The language study audio presents the email read at a slower pace, pausing after each paragraph for discussion.
This resource is quite similar to Babbel in that it provides highly structured lessons that are full of interactive exercises. This one has a nicer layout than Babble as well as a nifty social feature that enables limited language exchange for free.
Speechling is a great place to get pronunciation practice. It teaches these skills by getting users to practice mimicking native speakers. It also provides an option to get feedback on your pronunciation from real teachers. You can submit a limited number of recordings for feedback each month or you can subscribe to submit unlimited recordings. Read our review of Speechling.
I've used many. I think probably the most useful for me for a foundation was Coffeebreak Italian seasons 1 and 2. It's available for free as podcasts or online you can access each of the 40 lessons per season. You can pay for a subscription and have access to additional materials, but just going through each episode was very helpful for me. I've replayed them many times.
For apps, I've done duolingo for 5+ years, but it won't teach you things like grammar, it's better for remembering things you've already learned and for vocabulary. I'm also using BUSUU app on my phone, I think it's better than duolingo for more authentic voices and sentences.
If you want to sit at a computer and do more of an academic, rigorous course, check out Wellesley edx courses, they are free or you can pay to have your lessons graded and earn a certificate. I've done Italian basic and am working through intermediate (again!).
October 1st is in about 225 days. So the decision you need to make is how many hours you want to spend on this and what you mean by "decent foundation". You can read a paper by Cambridge Press on learning a 2nd language at -content/uploads/2018/10/How-long-does-it-take-to-learn-a-foreign-language.pdf My guess is you're describing a B1 or high A2 level as per _European_Framework_of_Reference_for_Languages An estimate from the Cambridge article is it would take around 200 hours to get to A2 and around 400 hours total to get to B1.
The linguist John McWhorter recommends a paid product, Glossika (article behind NYT paywall at -foreign-language.html) A somewhat similar product he suggests is Assimil which is less expensive (see =5021582 )
However neither of these is for an absolute beginner. I suggest starting with Pimsleur which comes in sets of 30 half-hour audio lessons. I don't think they sell the course anymore (and when they did it was pricy) but you can often find them at a library. You might want to do the first 3 levels (90 lessons) which would take 45 hours and then start one of the programs mentioned above. And maybe Pimsleur is all you want; a few years ago I did just these courses and then we did ok travelling in parts of Italy where English isn't common such as the Adriatic side. Didn't know anywhere near enough to have conversations but enough to handle standard tourist interactions in Italian.
If you want something closer to a standard class but self-taught, either as a supplement to the above or as your main methd, then the Great Courses has a class that is supposed to be equivalent to a first year Italian class at college and it's taught by a college prof. Their courses are expensive (although regularly on sale) but if your library has Kanopy you can watch all the videos free and the Great Courses will sell you the workbook for just $10. See -italian-step-by-step-and-region-by-region
I used Pimsleur audio for a foundation along with classes at my community college. It gave me a good head start when we started traveling to Italy 13 years ago. Pimsleur is great in the car during your commute.
I've done three things over a few years: Pimsleur CDs in the car while driving; Duolingo lessons every morning; and local community education classes. Taking a class is good, but only if your teacher is experienced and your class actually takes it seriously. You can only go as fast as the slowest person.
My Italian teacher has a YouTube channel ( @teacherstefano) that offers free videos with a mix of grammar content of varying levels and practical advice such as how you would order at a restaurant. Stefano is really engaging and is good at explaining things.
I also like Easy Italian on YouTube. There's an app called HelloTalk where you can write and talk with native Italian speakers who are learning English. Like any social media, HelloTalk can be hit or miss, but it can provide a good opportunity to practice conversation for free. iTalki is another website where you can book lessons with teachers or conversation practice.
I tried Babbel for German a few years ago and wasn't impressed, although I think the technical side of the service was fine. I'm also prepping for Italy in the Fall, and Mango is the first thing I intend to try. Your local library should have a number of resources available at no charge. And some of the YouTube resources mentioned above look interesting.
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