The tips I'm going to give you here are the result of my long experience as an Italian teacher for foreigners and , above all, they are the result of the mistakes I made in the past in learninglanguages as a student !

So, let's start and try to briefly summarize what you have to do if you want to learn Italian language as well!

1) THE FIRST AND THE MOST IMPORTANT THING YOU SHOULD ASK YOURSELF IS WHY YOU WANT TO LEARN ITALIAN! Maybe because you love the sound of Italian language, maybe because it's cool or you just have to? Sorry for my rudness but, in this case it would be better you give up! This is a weak motivation which usually drives most of the students to the failure.

If you feel instead a sincere attraction towards Italy, its culture and language, then go on carefully reading this article!

2) LISTENING AND READING.

Sorround yourself with a lot and selected inputs! Remember that listening and reading is the key to success in studying Italian! Of course, you can't watch movies or read long books at the beginning so you should choose inputs suitable for your linguistic level, therefore not authentic material.

READING: You need very simple inputs such as short dialogues or small graded books for students.

Avoid reading fairy tales in Italian: they are written in ancient Italian and contain some linguistic structures hard to understand in the first steps of the learning process.

LISTENING: Choose short videos with SUBTITLES IN ITALIAN. They have to last 4-5 minutes maximum, no more. It's very important to listen the same podcast three times at least because repetition is fundamental to build the so called linguistic core.

3) SPEAKING: At the beginning forget conversations and language exchange on Internet. Chats won't be possible before getting to a pre-intermidiate level at least. You like or not, at the beginning you need a specialized Italian teacher or school because only expert Italian teachers as a Second Language know how to selct materials according to your skills and interests, only specialized Italian teachers know how to control their speech with beginners. Simple Italian mother-tongues speak fast and tend to mix up Italian with their local dialect and, most of them, are not able to explain students how to learn a language.

4) When you get to the intermidiate or upper-intermidiate level you can even burn up grammar books! Anyway at the beginning you need it because you aren't a child anymore! The important is how you learn italian grammar: traditional exercises are very boring and usually a waste of time. You won't remember complex grammar rules when time for speaking will come. Then, what can you do? Flash-cards, pictures and linguistic games are really useful to learn linguistic structures in a dynamic way!

5) ENJOY THE PROCESS! Your brain has to be happy and motivated when it comes to learn. If you tire your brain with excessive duties, you won't learn! Learning Italian has to be pleasant and satisfactory so that 10-20 minutes every day will be ok in the basic level. Remember! Every single day, you need to feed your brain every single day, particularly in the first two months of study. Our brain can learn everything at any age but it learns slowly.

I hope to have clarified things a little bit for you, good luck!

See you soon!

Dario