Pizza, Vino and Gelato.. Oh my!

An Italian Learning Experience

   With summer travel plans set in stone, we have one small issue-- the language barrier. Though I have worked with ESL students and came out of my undergrad ESOL endorsed, I officially am THE ESOL student. Aaron knows enough German to get us through Germany-- he took four years of it in high school. However, though I have wanted to learn Italian since my "Eat, Pray, Love" phase, I still have yet to learn anything. So though I own two other Italian manuals, it made me feel better to purchase the official Rick Steves' Italian Phrases manual.

  

   Now I will give it to Rick. He has clearly set this out for travelers. So I am thankful he skipped most of the unnecessary lingo. To help myself overcome this daunting task, I whipped out the infamous post-its. I have a variety of colors, so I marked sections in three colors:

     a. Yellow= most important

     b. Blue= I think will come in handy

     c. Pink= Probably will never use, but just in case.

     d. Green= pronunciation page

The green is definitely the most important because I find myself flipping back there constantly. As does an English dictionary/glossary, this book has exact pronunciations of each letter. I have learned that the C makes the CH sound in Italian. But like English, I have found myself pronouncing words easier (at least I  think so!) after becoming comfortable with the building blocks of the language. I also, to audibly check myself, find myself using google translate to hear the word and double check my pronunciation. I find that even when reading to myself, sometimes I have to read something out loud if it is confusing me. Sometimes that silent reading does not do all the processing and I feel by reading it out loud I gain a better understanding. So I am very happy that google translate is free. But honestly, by tabbing the necessary, I feel I have scaffolded (?) my learning. Now I feel less overwhelmed by the amount of pages in the manual.

After two weeks of starting to read and using the above tabbing system, I put stars on ones around the house now saying random phrases.

My favorite is Verremmo una caraffa di vino rosso because who doesn't want a carafe of red wine!