Why do I feel stuck? Why can’t I speak Italian even though I know the grammar and have a good knowledge of vocabulary?
This is a question that many of my students ask me.
It often happens that I meet my students online first and then in person. We get to know each other through emails and placement tests. This is how I discover that they already know some grammar and have studied Italian for months or even years.
Then they arrive in Grottaglie or join the virtual classroom, the lessons begin, and something happens: when they have to speak, they freeze.
But why?
Knowing lots of words and grammatical rules is important, and understanding a conversation in Italian is important too. But speaking requires something else: practice and confidence. Yes, practice and exercises, just like at the gym!
When we speak, we have to find the right words, build sentences and respond to the person we are talking to in real time. If you are used mainly to reading, listening and doing exercises, this ability may not have been sufficiently trained yet.
How can you improve your spoken Italian?
Here are three simple tips:
- Speak every day, even for just two minutes. Talk out loud about what you have done or what you are going to do. If you don’t have anyone to practise with, recording your voice can be a good idea. This way, you won’t feel the pressure of having to speak in real time, and you can plan what to say and feel more confident!
- Sing in Italian: sing a song while following the lyrics. It helps you work on your pronunciation and become more comfortable speaking, training your tongue. Do you remember when I told you that speaking is like exercising at the gym? Well, there is also a physical aspect to it: speaking means coordinating your lips, tongue, jaw and other muscles involved in producing sounds. A new language may require movements that we are not used to.
- Memorise: I don’t like asking students to memorise things, but memory cannot be overlooked. To feel more confident when speaking, it is very useful to memorise groups of words (language chunks, such as a poco a poco or non vedo l’ora).
Finally, the most important piece of advice:
- Accept your mistakes: don’t wait until you know all the rules or have perfect pronunciation. I’ll also let you in on a little secret: Italians are very patient and are often happy to correct your mistakes.
