Learning to speak Italian

A few weeks ago my thirteen year old niece went on a class trip to Italy. Exciting stuff for a young girl. What was great was that a week before she was due to go I received an e-mail telling me about the new Italian Language course from Rocket Languages (I'm already a convert having learned French via their brilliant French course).

The thing was that, as they do for all their language courses they were offering a free 6 day mini-course via e-mail (I didn't even have to give any credit card details just tell them my e-mail address).

Bingo! The next day my niece and I are enjoying our first free italian audio lesson. Day two and we're reviewing the vocabulary and grammar that were used in that lesson and having fun practisiing our accents!

Day 3 another audio lesson and so it went. The long and the short of it is that by the time she got to Rome ( via Florence and Pompeii) having downloaded the audio mp3's to her ipod ( a cool way to pass all those hours in the school coach) she had a good command of basic greetings, could order food and other useful phrases and had an excellent understanding of Italian culture.

She was the most popular person on the trip (everyone wanted to hang out with her!) talk about a boost in confidence and self-esteem. The Italian boys she met were also impressed apparently!

So for her birthday she'll be getting the full course as she so wants to return to Italy. I'll enjoy learning Italian with her of course but suspect she'd prefer to practise with one of those admiring Italian boys! Now that's a worry for any uncle!

Check out the free
6 day Italian Course we used here