Have you ever asked yourself how can you learn Italian fast? Here's how! Follow these 4 steps strategy plan to start learning Italian successfully.
Before starting, let me get this out of the way first: you are not going to go from mediocracy to proficiency in just 7 days whatsoever. No book, course or app can help you achive this goal in such a short amount of time.
Unless you aren't a sort of genius who can read five books a day and remember every last bit of it, of course. In that case, please go ahead and give it a try, don't listen to this fool.
On the other hand, which I think is the most possible one, if you are someone just as ordinary as I am, who's trying to learn this wonderful language that is Italian, well I hate to break this to you, but it will take more than seven days to get where you want to go with your learning journey.
But I also believe that there is a more efficient and exiting way to do things.
Learning a language should be a fun process, as you are literally opening your mind to a new way of thinking and method of self-expression.
Spending hours on that grammar book will not take you anywhere trust me.
However, it is also true that you can go a very long way just by committing to learn Italian for as short as 7 days. There is no magic around it you have to be consistent. And that's applies for anything in life.
Three hours, one hour and a half, 20 minutes or 5 minutes, every day, every two or just twice a week do not matter. What matter is that you keep on putting the effort by being consistent.
After this long but must-said disclaimer, let me challenge you to commit to learn Italia (or any language really) for 7 days by following these 4 steps strategy plan, which are going to boost your learning curve no matter your level, while still maintaining the rest of your life and responsibilities without feeling overwhelmed
Step #1 - Learn the Top 1,000 words
I'm actually going to start by telling you what you should not do.
This is a mistake that I see a lot of language learners make. I made it myself when I was learning English (Yess, my mother tongue language is not English, but Italian :)).
I have watched a lot of people getting themselves into learning a ton of random vocabularies. Now, don't get me wrong, in the long term it makes sense to know as much vocabularies as possible. But in the short run this is a very ineffective strategy. Not only you are not going to retain all those new words that you have just learned but generally speaking you don't actually need a lot of kitchen or clothing vocabularies when having a conversation with someone. These sorts of topic can come up, but they are not the most common words in a given language and the 80/20 rule is a proof of it.
The 80/20 Rule
I am quite sure a lot of you have already heard of this rule. If not make yourself comfortable because this will blow your mind.
The general idea of the 80/20 rule is that everything in the universe is imbalanced. The numbers are not exact but let me give you some examples:
80% of wealth is held by 20% of people
80% of screen-time goes to 20% of actors
In short, you may think of the 80-20 rule as simple cause and effect: 80% of outcomes come from 20% of causes (inputs). The rule is often used to point out that 80% of a company's revenue for example is generated by 20% of its customers.
Now, let me get to the point of all of this. Nowadays there are a little over 170,000 words in the English language in current use.
However, only one to three thousand words make up the majority of the daily English use. That's crazy, right?!
This means that only a tiny percentage of the entire vocabulary is actually used.
So, my question is: Why are you trying to learn the whole dictionary to learn Italian when you use less than 5% of words daily even in your own language?
Doesn't it make a lot more sense to learn words that are part of that 1 to 3 thousand rather than learning random words like I don't know sofa bed or thermostat?
You don't need to learn words like oven or keystroke to have a general conversation with somebody.
So here where I want you to start. This first couple of days start by learning the top 1,000 Italian useful words.
There is a huge difference in the amount of usage of a word like
"something" as opposed to a specific one-use word like "peach".
I suggest that you write down the words on a notebook, but you can also download them if that's what you prefer.
Review them over and over again, you can also record yourself speaking both the words and their translation so that you can still practice them while you do other things such as exercise or going for a walk.
Just be creative on how you include your language learning in your life because technology is on your side, so you have no excuses as NO TIME.
There are also a few very fun and effective methods for you to make sure that you will remember a lot of vocabularies at ones on the long run. In fact, we don't want to put all this effort on learning them just to forget them the very next day.
Techniques as VISUALISATION and ASSOTIATION are very important to help you achive your goal faster.
Let's take the word "pesca" for example it means peach in English but in Italian it has a double meaning that is, peach and to go fishing. So, what I do is to imagine someone that eats a peach while fishing:
"a fisherman who eats a peach while fishing: un pescatore che mangia una pesca mentre pesca" I know it doesn't make sense :) but now you won't forget it.
These techniques can make a big difference in your learning speed, so I highly recommend that you implement them while learning the new words
Remember to keep things light and fun however you can because if you don't, it will become this endless list of words that you have to memorize, and eventually it becomes a boring task that drains way all your motivation.
Step #2 - Glue
Now here is where the thing gets a little bit more interesting and therefore complicated as well.
The next step should be gathering linguistic tools to glue together complete sentences and thoughts. This means learning the most common verbs, the most common two or three tense, sentences and expressions, which are usually enough to start communicating.
Keep in mind that the aim of this is not so much memorization only, but most importantly, the correct and proper usage of these words.
Knowing basic verbs conjugation is an essential foundation that you must have. Since without them you cannot create any sentences.
Also, to know daily expressions as "come sta? Dove posso ordinare la pizza?" and so on can really help boost your Italian.
I know learning grammar is not the most exciting thing to do on your so well-deserved free time, but it is essential. Don't feel discouraged and take it one step at a time.
Remember consistency is key!
Step #3 - Create a Connection
I feel like this is probably the most underrated step. All of us is going to hit a wall at some point or another.
All the memorization of vocabularies, verbs, grammar, expression and so on is not something easy and I am well aware of that. Believe me when I say that I truly feel you on this one.
So, what to do when you hit a breakdown, a moment of discomforted and cannot see yourself getting past it? When you are caught in that self-negative talk where the only thing that you say to yourself is that you are never going to make it, you are never going to become fluent?
The tricky thing is that when that first excitement starts to fade away so too does your consistency and the amount of effort that you'll put on your study plan.
Well, I found that to overcome this loss of motivation you have to create a connection with the language that you are learning. In our case Italian.
Everyone listen I don't know how many times I will say this, but we live in a world where if you want to you can fake to be in the Bahamas when in reality, you're just in your home.
You can design your hole surrounding to suite your desire to learn Italian or any other language.
Change your language phone in Italian
Watch movies on Netflix or short video on YouTube in Italian
Read short articles that suite your level
Listen to music, podcasts
Enroll to Online Italian Classes
Purchase a course
Immerge yourself in the culture, enjoy the art, the music, go to an Italian restaurant, find anything that you like going and do that by switching the language if possible. Find ways to connect with the language.
You really have all the tools in the world to learn every language that exist, just pick one and start from there.
Step #4 - Make mistakes
I am always surprised of how language learners are so stubborn when it comes to making mistakes while learning a new language.
So drear Italian learner let me tell you that there is no way on earth that you are going to become fluent or even arrive at an intermediate level without making a fool out of yourself.
If that's the case that means that you are just sitting on your desk learning a bunch of vocabularies and grammar rules without really applying what you have learned.
And you know that's not really the point of all of this. Right?!
So put yourself out there, speak with someone: your Italian teacher, one of our native speakers or if you don't have the opportunity to talk with someone do it alone. YES, ALONE.
Practice is as much important as theory, and even a little bit more
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