Saturday, 1 August 2009

Learn Fluent Italian In Under 3 Months

By Robertson B. Kunz

Many people desire to learn a foreign language like Italian as quickly as possible. In this article, I will explain exactly how you can achieve the goal of learning fluent Italian in 3 months or less.

In reality, many Italian students end up learning Italian for years in Italian language classes only to find that they still can't carry on a basic conversation by the end of their studies. On the other hand, I personally know many people who have learned Italian or another foreign language in 3 months or less.

If you already know another romance language like Spanish or French, you will be able to master Italian very quickly because of the great number of similarities between the languages in terms of vocabulary and grammar. If you have studied another foreign language but not necessarily a romance one, you will still have a slight advantage. If you have never learned another foreign language before, it may take you a little bit more time.

In the end though, you should remember that it is possible to achieve fluency in Italian in 3 months as long as you have a plan of action and stay with it.

Let's look over some statistics so that you can see how this goal is achievable.

Many language experts say that in most European languages including Italian, the 1000 most commonly used words make up 85% of common speech while the 3000 most commonly used words make up 95% of common speech. For our basic fluency goals in Italian, we will want to hit the 3000 word mark.

Also, many language experts tell us that in order for an English speaker to learn a European language like Italian, Spanish or French, it requires about 200 hours of active study time.

If you study Italian for 3 months, that means you get 90 study days. Since our goal is to learn 3000 Italian words, that means 33 new Italian words per day. If you study Italian every day for 2 hours, you will get 180 hours of Italian study by the end of 3 months which basically meets the 200 hour mark.

Many of you might think that learning 33 new words per day is too challenging. However, if you think about it, given that you have 2 hours of study time each day, that means you have to learn about 16 words per hour or about 1 word every 4 minutes. This is not so hard, is it?

Take into consideration the fact that many cognates exist between Italian and English like the English word "international" being "internazionale" in Italian and you will see that you will be able to pick up many Italian words in less than 5 seconds.

But we should also remember that you won't always have 2 hours to study only new vocabulary. It's also important that you review old vocabulary that you learned as well as concentrate on improving your grammar use. However, even given these other study areas, you should still have enough time.

Given this goal of 2 hours of active study each day and a goal of learning 3000 words by the end of your study period, you will achieve basic fluency in Italian in 3 months. The important thing is that you stay committed to studying each and every day and make sure that you are continually progressing. If you stay true to your plan, you will achieve your Italian fluency goal.

About the Author:

No comments:

Post a Comment