Unlock fluent Italian: Discover a better, untapped approach for spoken language mastery in our blog series. Ciao to effective speaking!
Italian Uncovered
Italian Uncovered is an Italian language course that gives you the basis to speak Italian and get to the intermediate level in only 20 lessons.
The website was founded by Olly Richards, a polyglot and a language enthusiast who has already created many language courses in different languages.
The course is based on the Story Learning method and is built around 20 chapters, which are part of a story written for Italian Uncovered. The name of the story is L’Uomo Col Cappello.
For each chapter, there is an audio recording of the story read by a native speaker, the Italian transcript and the English translation, a set of video lessons about pronunciation, grammar, vocabulary, etc., quizzes and exercises, and a space to practice speaking.
What’s Wrong with Italian Uncovered
Italian Uncovered is easy to use, engaging, and effective in giving you the basis for reading, writing, and speaking.
You also have active and encouraging support from the language tutors and the founder himself.
However, there is little room for speaking practice.
The audio part in each chapter provides only some guidelines about speaking practice. It gives you some pronunciation tips, and there are some sheets to practice speaking, but you don’t actually have a speaking partner.
I believe this poor audio section could be a limit to the course. In general, people who learn Italian want to speak fluently and learn how to have a real Italian conversation.
An Italian Uncovered Alternative for the Italian Language
If you want to become fluent in Italian, there’s no secret: you need to speak!
In this sense, I believe you should find a language course that allows you to speak Italian from day one.
Think In Italian courses are a good alternative to Italian Uncovered; they offer grammar lessons, readings, and an Italian audio course that allows you to practice your speaking skills with the help of the spaced repetition technique.
The audio course (Ripeti con me) is structured into a set of lessons in which you listen to a sentence (pronounced by a native Italian speaker) and have to repeat it after a short interval.
By repeating what you hear, you can actively practice your listening and speaking skills; what’s more, you don’t just passively repeat a sentence, but you actively recall it.
This approach is based on the active recall technique, which stimulates your brain to process the information and stick it into your long-term memory).
Think In Italian courses are designed to make you speak from day one; they focus on Italy and its culture and will make your learning process fun and engaging.
Learn more about Think In Italian courses.
Still translating in your head? Wanna speak Italian for real? Check out Stefano's courses to think directly in Italian and become fluent fast!
One Response
“I love learning new languages, especially Italian! Can’t wait to try this alternative method, thanks for sharing!”