Free Study planner + Templates + Recommended Resources
5 Study Schedule Templates for the Italian Language
This is the only free online study planner for the Italian language with 5 schedule templates. Choose one of the templates to get on the right track!
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5 Italian Study Schedule Templates
Open Italian language study plan template in full screen
Download Italian language learning plan template (PDF, Excel, etc.)
- Time commitment: 7 hours/week
With a regular plan, you practice 1 hour a day, every day.
Taking 2 live 1-on-1 lessons per week with a qualified teacher or an experienced native tutor is a good pace to practice speaking and get feedback.
This plan is the closest to the one I follow myself and I can assure that you’ll make steady progress.
Open Italian language learning plan template in full screen
Download Italian language study plan template (PDF, Excel, etc.)
- Time commitment: 14 hours/week
In the intensive plan, you commit 2 hours per day.
Diversify your study activities to cover all the language skills that you need: speaking, listening, writing, and reading.
Even though you could argue that the more your study, the faster you learn, I wouldn’t recommend studying more than a couple of hours a day because the gain from extra time gradually gets smaller.
Download (PDF, Excel, etc.)
- Time commitment: 4 hours/week
The light plan is for busy people.
No matter how busy you are, you should practice at least 30 minutes a day, every day.
To make the most of your limited time, take live lessons as frequently as possible.
Please note that this is barely enough to make visible progress, even though it can certainly help you keep your current level.
Open Italian language study plan template in full screen
Download (PDF, Excel, etc.)
- Time commitment: 7 hours/week
There’s plenty of free resources online to make the free plan viable.
You need to substitute paid 1-on-1 tutoring with language exchange with native speakers or find other venues to practice speaking. This can be time-consuming and you need to make up for lack of guidance with self-study.
Download Italian language study plan template (PDF, Excel, etc.)
- Time commitment: 4 hours/week
For a casual learner, the free light plan could be enough to avoid forgetting the language.
However, this is not enough to become fluent in a language.
In any case, to make to most of your limited time, practice speaking by yourself, for example reading aloud or repeating what you hear from videos or podcasts.
How to use the learning resources recommended in the templates
Ripeti con me!
“Ripeti con me!” is the best audio course to improve your speaking skills. It’s a set of audio lessons that prompts you to speak. By listening and repeating simple sentences, you’ll acquire vocabulary and grammar naturally.
You can also take it to learn Italian in the car.
It’s to be taken 20 minutes a day, every day.
Leggi con me!
There’s plenty of Italian news with slow audio, Italian short stories, and Italian conversations to practice listening and reading at the same time. If you repeat what you hear, you also get to practice speaking!
It takes about 5 minutes to go through one post. Do it at least 2-3 times a week, ideally every day.
It’s an important part of every Italian language study plan template.
Other recommended resources
Pimsleur Italian
If, as a total beginner, you feel that “Ripeti con me!” goes too fast
for you, or you’re afraid of making mistakes, you might want to start
with Pimsleur, then switch to RCM after a couple of months.
This course prompts you to repeat words and sentences like RCM, but with a more limited range and at slower pace.
Duolingo Italian
Duolingo is the best free app to become familiar with the sentence structures and learn basic vocabulary.
This excellent online Italian course makes virtually any similar paid app useless (Babbel, Busuu, etc.).
Recommended for total beginners up to lower-intermediate level.
Take a couple of lessons (5-10 minutes) every day, then put what you
learned into practice, for example writing your own sentences or using
the new words in your next live lesson.
My personal tip is to read everything aloud even if you’re not prompted to. You’ll learn faster.
Italian lessons on Skype
1-on-1 lessons on Skype are the absolutely the best way to master a language like a native.
However, they also happen to be the most expensive way.
Whether you take lessons with me or with other tutors on Italki, you need at least 2 weekly 1-hour sessions to make steady progress.
If you have a busy schedule, you could split your lesson time into shorter bits, like 30-minute lessons, 3-4 times a week.
Language exchange
If you don’t want to spend money on professional lessons, you could try looking for a language exchange partner.
For example, if you’re a native English speaker, go find an Italian who studies English, then teach each other on Skype.
This is not recommended for beginners who need competent guidance.
Also keep in mind that you’re not spending money, but you’re still spending your time teaching your language.
Vocabulary review
During a 1-on-1 lesson or a language exchange, you get to hear a lot
of new words and expressions. Your tutor should type them in the Skype
chat box while they introduce them. This way, you can review them later.
As a learner, I do this the day after every lesson. It takes me about 20-30 minutes to review vocabulary from a 1-hour lesson.
If you take paid language lessons or do a language exchange, your
lessons are the main source of vocabulary in a language learning plan
template.
Writing
Writing is an excellent way to elaborate on what you learned recently and put new words and grammar patterns into practice.
Twice a week, 30 minutes per session is a good pace.
Every serious language learning plan template includes writing.
Youtube
From a low-intermediate level on, it’s useful to watch and listen to media made for native speakers.
This could be the news in Italian, TV series, or movies.
For better results, go over the same clip several times and repeat or note down the words that you want to learn.
This too is available for free and is included in every free Italian language study plan template.
Guides to use language study schedule templates
There’s plenty of advice on how to use language study schedule templates.
If you still need help with a language learning plan template, check out this resource list.
- How to make a language learning plan that’s right for you
- How to make a fool-proof language study plan
- How to make a language learning plan in 10 steps
- How to make a weekly language learning schedule in 5 steps
- 3 steps to create a language learning study plan
- How fast can you learn Italian? A guide to different study methods, plus hacks to speed it all up
My proven study plan templates to master Italian
As a serial language learner, I know what to do in order to master a language.
Honestly, I don’t even build a plan because everything comes out naturally to me.
However, if you’re not familiar with languages, you need a self-study plan to make the most of your study time, choose the right resources, and keep motivation (why learn Italian?).
That’s why I made these study plan templates for the Italian language, each with a different combination of time commitment and budget.
How to choose a plan from these 5 examples
Here, you find 5 Italian study schedule templates with different options: time commitment, budget, and recommended learning resources.
If you made a plan with the Italian study planner, you already know which one is best for you.
Else, I strongly recommend you to use the planner. In 3 minutes, you’ll know how much time and money you need to invest in learning Italian to meet your goals.
What’s the difference between study schedule templates
All these Italian study schedule templates include my favorite resources to learn Italian.
I chose them to cover every aspect of the language, with a focus on speaking, which is often overlooked both by students and language courses.
The main difference is how much time and money you’re willing to commit to language learning.
- Regular plan: to make steady progress
- Intensive plan: for faster progress
- Light plan: for the busy learner
- Free plan: when your budget is 0
- Free light plan: for the casual learner
Now, let’s look into these 5 Italian study schedule examples!
Is a language learning template enough?
A language study template doesn’t just list all your learning activities but also shows how often and when you’re supposed to do them.
These activities should cover all the skills that you need to learn: reading, listening, writing and speaking.
If you find that you are lacking a particular learning type, you will need to find a learning activity that can supplement it.
Your weekly planner is for you to check that you’re sticking with your study plan. Each time you perform a learning activity, you can put a mark next to it. At the end of the week, you can count up the marks against your target figure.
Your planner should be between 1-2 months long, no longer. In fact, you need to review your study plan every couple of months. This is particularly true in the first year when you are developing rapidly. The activity or resource that helped last month may no longer be relevant.
This is how you learn a language in hours, not years.
What you get from this Italian study schedule maker
Under the hood, this Italian study schedule builder includes:
- Language study time calculator from level to level
- Feasibility check
After you submit the form of this Italian study planner, you’ll get:
- An email with the results (time, etc.)
- A downloadable weekly study schedule
- Tips to use the recommended resources
If compared with the few similar tools I found online, this Italian study planner has the following advantages:
- Customized to each learner’s skills and needs
- Specifically designed by an Italian polyglot
- Returns a ready-to-use weekly timetable
- With practical advice on how to study
- Gives instant results
