It has been over 10 years since the last time I was in Italy, which was 2011. While I have occasionally exercised my Italian in the meantime, it’s been few and far between. Even having the Italian girl here at the office for nine months didn’t result in any real practice. Early on, I asked her if I could practice with her and she said ‘sure’, but in my everyday experience, she nearly always responded in English if I tried speaking Italian with her. Very rarely would she indulge me. When her family came here, they spoke English with me. So knowing that I’m going to Italy this November, I want to practice more. 

I’ve been reading, which increases my vocabulary slightly; it ought to increase it ALOT, but I seem to be struggling with retaining the vocab as I get older. The biggest problem for me is speaking and understanding it, because I have no day-to-day contact with the spoken language.  

My son recently sent me a news blurb that Italy may initiate a language proficiency test for those that want citizenship. I wondered if I myself would be able to pass such a test. Looking into it, I found the level of proficiency required would be a B1 on the CEFR (Common European Framework Reference). That is the lower intermediate level. I took three online example tests yesterday and I easily passed the tests, although I also made errors on each of them. Most of those were minor grammatical errors, and honestly, at no point was I confused about any of the vocab. But that’s reading…. 

At this point I’m certain I would be able to pass a written test.  

To help with my listening comprehension, I’ve been watching a few Italian TV shows. I watch those with English subtitles because 1) it helps me to full grasp what is being said, and 2) I’m not the only one watching. But it does help in reminding me of vocabulary, and also just hearing and understanding.  

I was watching a youtube video the other day where the guy was talking about this deficiency in language learning that everyone has; essentially, you can’t really learn a language simply by reading a book to gain grammar rules and vocabulary. You must put in the time listening and practicing saying things in return. 

He spoke about how spoken language elides words, making it difficult to comprehend if you aren’t in the habit of hearing it. For native English speakers, we have no problem making sense of the checker at a convenience store saying ‘j’a wanna bag withat?’ because of context and because we’ve heard the combination. But the elision throws non-native listeners something fierce. It happens for me in Italian. I need to accustom my ear to hearing it.  

The guy in the youtube video suggested just constantly listening to target-language content, so that your ear will acclimate to hearing the sounds. So recently I’ve been listening to more Italian content during the day while I’m working. 

I’ve also started taking 15 minutes every day and reading Italian out loud, so that my mouth can get used to speaking the words. I have, for some time, noticed that I can speak a few sentences out loud relatively fluidly. But after that, I start to get bogged down. This means that conversation can be very tedious with me. Which probably explains why the Italian speakers who have any level of fluency in English would prefer to speak English rather than Italian with me. 

I used to, in my prayer time, take time to pray in Italian, always out loud, so that I could train myself to speak it too. But I would usually only do this for a few minutes at a time.  

Anyway, I’m hoping these efforts pay some dividends and I improve my listening and speaking skills. But in all reality, without actually moving there, or finding some community here that will speak Italian to me, I’m aware I’ll always be limited in what I can accomplish.