Fluent Italian
Cassaundra Marley
Maybe you've collected resources to master another language; books, courses, and language exchange buddies. But what if you could follow a few simple principles and master a language by just having fun with a few technical tools? Say goodbye to your textbooks!
This year, my number one personal goal is to become proficient in Italian. In this case, proficient means B2 or conversationally fluent. To reach that goal I'll spend about 700 hours reading and listening to Italian content. No classes, no textbooks, no studying at all. I aim to acquire Italian by having fun.
In this article, I want to show you the tools and approach I'll use to tackle this ambitious goal. I've done something similar in my "meta" series about how to take smart notes, where I showed my note-taking process. I have no illusions that my approach is the definitive one to acquiring languages. But, I've succeeded with this method before and know many who also did.
First, we'll look at my reasons for learning Italian. No matter what I set out to learn, I always make sure that I have a clear picture of my why. Without knowing my intrinsic motivation, it's hard to keep going when the going gets tough.
Next, we'll look at my tools; my method and the software I'll use. Having a method or set of daily activities is a crucial tool in my arsenal. My workflow is ultimately what will make me fluent in Italian, not the apps that I use.
Finally, we'll dive into what my day-to-day will look like. No matter how shiny tools are, I won't succeed if I don't use them. Through trial and error, I've found what works best for me and is sustainable day after day.
The clich is true: the best way to learn a language is to fall in love. In my case, I fell in love with an incredible Italian woman. She happens to be a polyglot who speaks perfect English and is learning my native tongue (Dutch), but I want to understand her on a deeper level. I believe that culture and language are portals to knowing someone more deeply.
Between 2007 and 2011 and spent over 50 hours per week mastering Spanish. I was enrolled in a university program to get my dual degree in Spanish philology and applied linguistics. That meant I had to master Spanish, as our entire curriculum was in Spanish. And I loved it, no matter how tough it got. Now I want to see if I can repeat this experience in a less extreme way.
Another reason to tackle Italian is to test my approach to language acquisition. Through the method I describe below I mastered two languages: English and Spanish (Dutch is my native tongue). I want to make sure my successes are not a fluke by testing my principles even more.
I don't believe in studying a language, only in acquiring it. You can't take a skill-building approach to a language; it needs to become a part of you. And the only way to make a language a part of you is by spending a lot of time with it. That's why I say acquiring languages and not learning languages.
The principles you'll see explained below are controversial in the language learning community. Many members prefer to follow classes, use textbooks, and study grammar. I say: don't do any of those things and take a more natural approach instead.
Most of my principles are informed by the linguist Stephen Krashen. It's true that I've simplified his findings a lot and don't worry too much about nuances. What I do know is that I acquired two languages to fluency this way and know dozens of others who also did. By contrast, I know less than a handful of people who achieved high levels in their chosen language by studying it.
But what you do from moment to moment defines whether you'll keep showing up. If you don't have fun doing something, it's not likely you'll keep putting an effort in. So, my main principle for language acquisition is: fun first.
As you'll see in the principles that follow, fun first is the principle that informs them all. I can't be bothered following boring classes or textbooks. All I want is to learn a language by exposing myself to it, while aiming to have as much fun as possible.
This principle is a major point of discussion in the language learning community. Some say you should try to speak from day one. Others say you should get hundreds of hours of input before uttering a single word in your target language. I'm somewhere in the middle, but I do favor input over output in the beginning.
In the first hundreds of hours I spend with a language, I try to first read and listen as much as possible. I want to get a sense of what the language looks and sounds like before I try to express myself. That way, my subconscious will be conditioned to the point that I utter most words and phrases without giving them a second thought.
Once I've heard countless times how I should sound, it becomes easier to correct myself or to receive correction. But it takes time to train my ear, and even longer to train my mind to produce new grammar. But language is rarely logical, so I can't rely on rules; I need to train my intuition instead.
To have as much fun as possible while getting loads of input means consuming tons of content. While there are all kinds of graded materials for learners, I tend to dive headfirst into media by natives for natives.
TV shows are often how I break into a language. When the language that I'm learning dubs popular series and movies, I've hit the jackpot. I get my hands on the dubbed versions of my favorite shows and movies... and then I watch them to exhaustion. As I already know much of the plot and dialogue, I can focus on deciphering the language.
By binge-watching shows dubbed in Spanish for thousands of hours, I figured out how to speak in different dialects. Watching those shows prepared my mind to sound like a native when speaking. I did the same for German; watching hundreds of hours of dubbed television primed my mind to understand almost 100% of everyday conversations.
While using dubbed versions of shows and movies is great, I do want to start consuming original content as soon as possible. One way to boost my comprehension and make watching originals more fun is by using flashcards.
But make no mistake, I still don't study the language. The way I do flashcards is very simple. On the front of the card is a sentence in my target language; on the back is the translation in English including optional notes on words and expressions within the sentence. And to help my listening comprehension, the front of the card also contains audio of the sentence read out loud by a native speaker.
To some, this still feels like studying. That's why it's a controversial principle and people have found a way around it. For example, my girlfriend learned half a dozen languages by swapping out flashcards for just reading extensively using electronic dictionaries (most notably LingQ).
Grammar study is always a contentious subject in the language learners community. Some swear by grammar study, others say you should avoid learning rules at all costs and absorb them through input instead. I fall somewhere in the middle.
In the past, I would memorize verb tables, learn rules about articles, dissect complex sentences, and do other ineffective things. But my goal was to communicate using my target language, not to translate texts. Soon I discovered that no memorized grammar rule would ever make me fluent, so I ditched the approach and opted for massive input instead.
Input worked wonders to kickstart my listening comprehension and conversational ability. But little mistakes would slip in that I wouldn't catch. After a while, I noticed that just reading through a simple grammar book would help me catch common errors and correct them effortlessly. I wasn't studying, but I became aware of my mistakes and made it easier for me to spot them. The key is in finding a balance.
For this learning project, I will lean on some tools I've trusted for more than a decade (like Anki), and some new tools that come highly recommended (like LingQ). We'll have a look at each, see why I choose them, and how I believe/know it's going to help me.
Below are the services I'm going to use. Apart from YouTube they're all paid services, but I just remind myself that otherwise I'd be spending hundreds of euros on ineffective classes. Media is pivotal to my success, so I happily pay for services that help me succeed.
I picked up this little trick from my friend Matt who created the Refold language acquisition roadmap. He recommends creating a new YouTube account and watching a few videos in your target language. Before you know it, all recommendations will be in that language.
This is easily one of the best hacks I've found to find free content that's interesting in any language. Combined with subtitles and the Language Reactor plugin (see the Dictionaries section), YouTube is one of my primary sources of input.
Netflix
I'm a sucker for dubbed TV shows, especially for the ones I've already watched once or several times in English. Because I already know the plot, I can make it a game to decipher the language.
Not all languages dub foreign shows. If that's the case for your target language, search for original shows in that language. What's great about original shows is that they often come with exact or closed caption subtitles; dubbed shows often have mismatching subtitles as the translations are done by different teams.
If a show is dubbed but doesn't have matching subtitles, I'll just watch it without them. That's another reason I rewatch shows and movies I know by heart, as it makes the input much more comprehensible in my experience.
Other streaming services
Italy seems to be the country of streaming services, as I've already encountered about a handful of them. Apart from the cable networks, there are also dedicated streaming services that import lots of shows from the US. And because Italians dub everything, that means loads of comprehensible input.
If you don't know anyone in a country where your target language is spoken, getting access to streaming services can be tricky. Not only is there this nasty thing called geo-blocking, but just getting a subscription can be challenging. Unless you have an address or bank account in that country, some streaming services will be out of reach.
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