Italian Short Stories with Slow Audio
Simple, entertaining short stories for beginners and intermediate speakers with slow audio, Italian transcript, and English translation to help you improve your listening and reading skills.
- Think directly in Italian
- Audio + transcript + translation
- All levels
What's in a Reading?
Slow Audio
Every Italian text is read by a native speaker at a slow but natural pace to catch every word.
Italian Transcript
There's an Italian transcript to read along if you need a visual aid.
English Translation
No need to look up new words with the complete English translation!
Is it for me?
This podcast is for you if...
You enjoy learning something new
There’s a whole treasure trove of interesting and challenging material to get you to practice listening and reading.
You want to start thinking in Italian like a natural
Repeat what you hear and resist the temptation to look at the translation right away. I’m confident you’ll be thinking in Italian in a couple of days.
You want to make the most of your time
Listen to the material while commuting or exercising. You can do it anywhere!
You have time to practice a little every day
Being consistent is key!
This podcast is NOT for you if...
You’ll just listen passively and not properly
To make true progress, you have to speak and not just listen and read.
You’re too busy to practice daily
Many casual learners fail because they skip classes. Try to find an extra 5-10 minutes per day to listen to a story.
Short stories to practice reading and listening
Listen to original Italian short stories read by a native speaker at a slow pace!
A challenging way to...
- Improve your listening skills
- Expand your vocabulary
- Master grammar patterns and idioms
- Naturally improve pronunciation
The ideal podcast for beginners to intermediate Italian speakers
- Simplified for your level
- Slow, but natural pace to catch every word
- With an English translation
How to Learn Italian with these Readings
Learn in 4 Steps
Here’s a simple plan to learn effectively with these readings.
To get the most out of your short story, piece of news, or conversation, I suggest this 4-step approach.
1. Skim
Read the story for the gist, not the details. The first time, focus on trying to understand the main ideas of the story: the characters, the major plot developments, and the setting.
2. Scan
Take your time to read it again carefully. Look up unknown words, phrases, or grammatical constructions that are unfamiliar to you. Write them down in a notebook or on flashcards to help you memorize them.
3. Look up
Look at the translation to read the story one more time. This way, you understand the text fully and have access to the translations and explanations.
4. Sum up
For further practice, I recommend writing a summary of the story. This way, you'll have a more complete understanding of it and make new vocabulary and grammar topics easier to memorize.
There's no need to...
Catch every word
Listening is more difficult than reading. Don't be anxious to catch every single word right away. Don't stop the audio!
Look up every word
When you stop to look up words, you lose the flow. First, try to rely on the Italian version.
Italian Reading: Italian Texts for Beginners
In this section, you will find easy Italian texts for beginners (A1 and A2) and intermediate students (B1 and B2) to practice reading in the Italian language.
A professional teacher prepared short texts, engaging news in slow Italian, everyday topics, and Italian conversations, as well as challenging comprehension questions that follow each one.
You can even download them as pdf and print any text you wish.
This material is perfect as comprehensible input for Level A1, Level A2, and Level B1. In other words, this is a useful story series for beginners and intermediate learners.
How to read Italian short stories and master the Italian language
Build Vocabulary
When you read a captivating story, you encounter new vocabulary words frequently.
When you encounter a new word, you have a few options for how to handle it: ignore it, look it up, or figure it out from the context.
If you ignore it, you might be able to get through the story, but you’ll miss out on learning a lot of useful information. Looking up every word is tedious and inefficient, but if you try to guess the meaning from context, you’ll be able to learn the word, remember it, and use it in conversation.
When you read in your target language, you’ll encounter new vocabulary words frequently.
Focus on trying to learn the meaning of each new word as you encounter it. This will help you quickly build your vocabulary while reading.
Recognize Words Based on Context
Every time you encounter a new word in a story, try to guess its meaning from the context.
If you can’t figure out the meaning from the passage, then look it up in a dictionary. When you encounter the same word again, try to remember its meaning.
If you keep encountering the same word, you’ll start to associate it with different contexts.
Doing this will help you remember new vocabulary words and build your reading comprehension.
Help Build Confidence and Fluency
When you read a short story in your target language, you’ll find yourself naturally stumbling over some words.
Every time you encounter a new word, you’ll feel a small pang of nervousness. Pause and think about how to handle it.
Try to guess its meaning from the context. If you still can’t figure it out, look it up in a dictionary. As you read more and more, you’ll feel less and less nervous about the words you don’t know.
You’ll learn to recognize words based on context, which will make it much easier to understand the story and enjoy a smoother reading.
Strengthen your pronunciation skills
When you read a story in your target language, you’ll stumble over new words frequently. When you stumble over a word, try saying it out loud.
When you say words out loud, you’ll naturally hear how they’re pronounced and use proper pronunciation. When you say words incorrectly, they’ll sound strange to you.
You’ll quickly learn how to pronounce the word the right way. This simple strategy will help you improve your pronunciation.
You might even discover that you mispronounced certain words all along.
Increase your knowledge of Italian culture
By reading short stories in Italian, you’ll learn about the culture and customs of the Italian people.
When you read about the traditions, beliefs, and customs of a new culture, you’ll gain a better understanding of how people view the world and how they live their lives. You’ll also gain a better understanding of how Italian culture differs from your own culture.
This knowledge will help you improve your comprehension.
It will also make reading more enjoyable because you’ll have a better understanding of what’s happening in the story.
The best Italian short stories that you won't find in books
Italian reading: books for beginners, pre-intermediate learners, and intermediates?
If you’re one of those who like me love the smell of paper, but you’re not lucky enough to be in Italy to step into a bookstore, choose from this collection of Italian short stories at beginner and intermediate levels to boost your Italian language practice.
There’s a variety of free Italian texts for beginners to practice reading and expand your language knowledge.
You can search for books with Italian short stories on Amazon and read them on your Kindle, but it’s hard to search text from a book, whether on paper or on Kindle.
My view is that it’s the best way of learning new words while having fun – with easy Italian text.
Stories for beginners and intermediate level
Do you enjoy reading stories and do you want to learn Italian?
Check out these Italian short stories for beginners.
In this section, read our entertaining short stories for beginners or intermediates.
You will improve your reading fluency, and comprehension and develop your vocabulary.
You will have fun reading texts, learn a lot of new words, and understand Italian better!
Short chapters with carefully chosen vocabulary so you can easily finish each story without getting frustrated!
There is no need to use the dictionary all the time – instead, you can keep reading and enjoy the stories.
Additionally, proper grammar is taught at the right level, helping you to grasp new grammar without being overwhelmed.
Easy Italian text for beginners
Reading in Italian… why is it so hard?
Italian story books for beginners are too long, while these stories are short and simple, and contain useful words. They’re enjoyable fiction for beginners.
Learning with a book of Italian short stories can be boring, and reading Italian literature on Amazon’s Kindle can be tiring.
For reading in Italian, all you need is an Italian text with an English translation and slow audio.
Because short stories are, by definition, short, you may use them to pack a lot into a small amount of time.
That’s more convenient than a book to learn Italian, even on Amazon’s Kindle.
Easy short stories in Italian offer exposure to simple, natural sentence structure.
These texts in Italian are great for beginners just getting accustomed to this foreign language and intermediate speakers who want to maintain their language competency.
If you are learning Italian, subscribe to my newsletter to have new stories delivered to your email address.
Download this podcast of Italian short stories for beginners
This collection of Italian texts for beginners makes use of simple yet entertaining stories to help in your Italian learning.
- Italian short stories for beginner pdf free
- Italian short stories for intermediate learners pdf free
By covering a diverse range of vocabulary and grammar, and supplementing it with free audio, you can improve your reading and writing skills, and even practice listening and pronunciation.
Recorded by a professional voice talent from Italy, the stories are narrated using a standard accent and slightly slower speed than how actual people speak.
Italian text with English translation
Easy Italian stories for children and adults allow beginners and intermediates to grasp the narration properly. Extra care has also been given to the recording of the audio to ensure a pleasurable listening experience for learners.
Listening to short stories or news with slow audio is an effective and enjoyable method. It’s more effective than reading long books, also because books usually don’t come with audio or translation. You can view the Italian transcript and the English translation without any special software.
For those of you who can’t just slip away from life, travel to Italy, and immerse yourself in a foreign language to learn it, this is your solution!
Just reading a story in Italian will make you feel like you’re in Italy.
Master the language, an Italian short story a day!
Beginners will love these story collections
When you’re still a beginner or intermediate-level learner, it can be difficult to find materials to practice reading.
You will also need to consult a dictionary while you’re reading Italian, and without audio accompaniment, you will find it difficult to catch new words and how they’re pronounced by native speakers. It’s easy to get confused.
Italian reading practice shouldn’t be complicated, right?
With easy Italian reading for beginners, reading and listening to short stories can be a fun and painless way of mastering this language.
Reading and listening improve your comprehension skills and help you formulate better sentences.
Subscribe to my newsletter to read Italian online regularly.
We all love stories
Through the eyes of a character in a story, we can live their lives and enrich our lives.
That’s why I recommend reading: not only to improve your language skills but also to broaden your horizons and learn about other cultures.
The free stories available here tell about daily life and important events of people in Italy and give an insight into Italians’ life and culture.
You’ll also be surprised to know how much people across different cultures have in common.
Accelerate your learning
These resources come in all shapes and sizes and can help you get to know:
- Grammar
- Slang
- Idiomatic expressions
Unlike novels or other long stories, short-form stories are easy to digest.
Italians are storytellers by nature, and Italy is the birthplace of some of the greatest writers in history (think about Italian authors like Italo Calvino, Luigi Pirandello, Giovanni Verga, etc.).
Whether you are passionate about poetry, thrillers, science fiction, or mysteries, here are some great resources that can help feed your thought.
This website is a great resource if you’re a beginner. It’s easy to navigate and contains lots of practical examples.
This is a great collection of simplified stories on different topics.
Italian easy readers
Italian easy readers are Italian-English bilingual texts with slow audio.
That’s all you need for your daily Italian reading practice. Read Italian online, 100% free!
Each Italian paragraph of an Italian story is a step towards fluency:
- Italian paragraph for beginners
- Italian paragraph about family
- Italian paragraph about love
- Italian paragraph about myself
With new texts being added regularly, this collection is an endless source of Italian reading for beginners, free (translated into English).
Since these stories are often pretty straightforward, you don’t need to be a professional reader.
They’re more interesting for adult Italian learners than fairy tales. Indeed, fairy tales are written in simple language but are more suitable for children.
In these Italian short stories to read, you find new vocabulary (words) that you can immediately put to use in everyday life. Practice your listening skills by listening to a native speaker narrating the stories.
- Enjoyable stories
- Varied vocabulary and sentence structures
- Easy grammar for beginners
- Audio for listening practice
- English translation
Discover them one by one!
These story collections are part of the plan “Leggi con me!“, which also includes Italian jokes, Italian songs and, Italian reading all.
Your Italian Language Coach
Ciao! My name is Stefano. I am an Italian tutor and course author.
As a serial language learner, I’ve lectured in polyglot clubs about my method.
After learning 12 languages, I can tell you that we all master languages by listening and mimicking.
With my method, you’ll be speaking Italian from Lesson 1.
Stefano Lodola
Italian language tutor, translator, polyglot
Rave Reviews by Learners and Experts
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Ripeti con me! has been the best language learning experience I’ve had.
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I have been taking lessons with Stefano for a year and a half. Stefano is an excellent teacher. Thanks to him, my Italian has improved dramatically.
Stefano understands all aspects of the Italian language. He has a lot of experience, not only in teaching Italian but also in language learning. This makes him an ideal teacher.
I highly recommend him!
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I’ve been using it for several months and I was drawn to it.
It’s a method that works for people in the Peace Corps when they have to learn a language fast to repeat entire phrases and then use the context of the phrases to develop their language skills.
You’re not only listening and repeating whole phrases but you’re learning grammar step by step at the same time.
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And I’m very cautious as to which platform I use to help me learn, so this is worth every single penny.
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Vivinne – USA
Ripeti Con Me has really helped with my language learning, with my speaking, which is what I’m mostly interested in.
I noticed within about 3 to 4 days of starting that my speaking ability took a jump as well as my listening comprehension.
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Jim – USA
I really like learning Italian on Think in Italian.
It’s a no-nonsense method that appeals to me – no time wasted doing exercises or playing games.
[Its sentences] are well thought out and they can be adapted to real conversation pretty easily.
No memorization either. It’s right to the point.
