Here are some tips for getting the most out of the Language Speedway Italian course.
1. Set up a regular study schedule
This is by far the most important thing you can do. Learning a new language takes a long time and you’ll never succeed without a plan. Work out how many hours you want to spend each week and then allocate specific times during the week to achieve those hours. Short, frequent study sessions work better than long, infrequent ones, but mostly your results will depend on how many hours you put in each week.
2. Study every day
Never skip a day. If there are some days when you can only spare 10 minutes, then use those 10 minutes to review what you’ve already learnt. Human memory is very unreliable - if you skip just one day you’ll start forgetting what you learnt the day before. If you regularly skip days then your progress will be severely hampered - each time you revisit the course you’ll be discouraged to find that you have hundreds of exercises that need to be reviewed and that you’ve forgotten a lot of the material. Spending at least a few minutes every day can make the difference between breezing through the course with ease or struggling every step of the way.
3. Think in whole phrases, not individual words
When doing the main phrase exercises (in the Grammar section) you should always strive to think in whole phrases, not individual words. In the listening exercises, try to understand the meaning of the whole Italian phrase without translating each individual word into English. In the speaking exercises you should read the whole English phrase, think about what it means, imagine that you want to express that idea in Italian and then finally construct the Italian phrase. Doing it this way will help you to start thinking in Italian.
What you really want to avoid doing is translating one word at a time. Word-for-word translation might seem like the easiest thing to do early on in the course, but if you continue to do it this way you’ll find it much more difficult to get used to Italian sentence structures. Instead your Italian will continue to be dominated by English grammatical patterns.
4. Allocate lots of review time
Before you can start using the new concepts that you learn in each lesson you need to internalize the new information. That is, you need to learn it so well that you can draw on your knowledge instantly, without having to spend valuable seconds searching your memory for words or grammatical rules. This level of proficiency only comes with practice - lots and lots of practice.
The exercise system is designed specifically to ensure that you get this regular practice by forcing you to review old material at regular intervals. But you need to make sure you work with the system, not against it. There are two ways to ensure you spend enough time reviewing old material:
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Make sure you select an appropriate speed setting on the exercise screen. The initial speed setting is “Very Fast”, which is appropriate when you’re first starting the course and have nothing to review. But as you progress through the course you should consider dropping the speed to “Normal”. This speed strikes a good balance between reviewing old material and learning new material.
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Use the dedicated review exercises. You’ll find these on the review page and they will allow you to spend time just solidifying and internalizing your existing knowledge without having to worry about anything new. The review exercises are a particularly good choice for times when you only have a very limited amount of study time available.
5. Monitor your progress and pace yourself
This is a self-paced course, which means that ultimately you are responsible for deciding how quickly to proceed though it. The best way to monitor your progress is to be aware of how difficult you are finding each new lesson and each new exercise. You should find each new lesson challenging but not too stressful. Before starting a new exercise you should be able to answer all the questions from all the previous exercises quite quickly and easily.
If you find yourself in a situation where all the exercises seem difficult and stressful then it’s a sure sign that you’re trying to go too quickly, taking on new information faster than you can absorb it. Have another look at tip number 4 and spend a few days just doing the review exercises. Don’t move on to a new lesson until you can answer all the questions in all the review exercises quickly and easily.
6. Take advantage of the forum
When you feel like you’re ready to start putting what you’ve learnt into practice, the Language Speedway Forum is the ideal place to start. Here you’ll be able to communicate in Italian with other people who are at the same level as you in a safe, judgement-free environment. Feel free to dive in at any time - if you don’t know enough Italian yet then try using a mixture of Italian and English. And don’t worry about making mistakes - the best way to learn is to make mistakes and have someone correct them for you.
