EasyItalianNews.com 1 maggio 2025

Comments

1. Keith says

   May 1, 2025 at 7:55 am

   Il livello perfetto per me. B1 direi.
   Non troppo complicato ma con uno o due parole e espressione nuovi. Grazie.

   • wpx_easyital says

     May 1, 2025 at 10:49 am

     If you can understand the audio without the text support, Keith, then you are likely underestimating your level in Italian.

     If not, then try focusing on the audio first without the text, with the aim of building long-form listening skills. It’ll take a few months, but those are the doorway to the world of ‘real Italian’, so radio, TV, podcasts etc.

     Building long-form listening skills is what this site is for, basically. The texts are only to support that.

     • Pettirosso says

       May 7, 2025 at 2:08 am

       I was hoping that you could please share your language learning experience/advice with me.

       I am about a B-1 Level. I have finished Pimsleur’s five levels (a couple of times). I listen to Coffee Break Italian and have finished their 3-level course. I am almost finished with Duloingo Italian. I listen to Slow Stories in Italian with Elena. I read graded readers in Italian. I watch some Italian movies with English subtitles.

       I have studied for 2.5 years and I am making progress albeit slowly, but most importantly I really enjoy what I am doing.

       I have started to listen to Easy Italian News and I really like it. However, I think I may be listening to it the “wrong” way based on a comment I read in the discussion the other day. The text I read from May 1st said that site was designed to develop “long form listening skills” and that that might take months to accomplish.

       I usually read the stories quickly in English first to get the “jist” of what I will be hearing. I then listen in Italian one or two times without text. Then once more with the Italian text and once again with no text.

       I can have a hard time understanding the spoken word if I do not at first have a general idea of the topic being discussed. Further, I find that I get “tired” after about 30 seconds of listening (certainly not the “long form” I think you may be referring to). I also find that I can get tripped up when I hear a word that I just about recognize its meaning at the edge of my consciousness. I spend time thinking about it and miss several seconds of whatever is spoken after the “mystery” word. Then I am lost and need to try harder to understand the flow of what is going on in the story.

       How is it best to develop that listening skill?

       THANKS SO MUCH for any advice.

       • wpx_easyital says

         May 7, 2025 at 12:30 pm

         From what you say, Robin, you’ve made very good progress in two and a half-years of part time self-study. I wouldn’t describe it as slow, at all, and you’re doing useful things, especially the reading and now listening practice.

         As regards building listening skills, first of all be aware that for native English speakers who don’t already know a Latin-origin language such as French or Spanish, it’s normal to find understanding spoken Italian hard. I’d estimate that you’d need hundreds of hours of practice to get from zero to B1, but… you’ve been busy doing other things it seems, such as studying grammar.

         Well, it’s not to late to prioritise listening comprehension, but you will need to appreciate that understanding a spoken text is not like studying grammar, and modify your approach. I get that it’s easier if you know the topics before you listen, but while reading “the stories quickly in English first to get the “jist” of what I will be hearing” will help you understand the content of the bulletin (which you are reading in English) it’s absolutely no way to improve your Italian listening skills, sorry.

         The whole point of real-time listening is that you have to figure out here and now what’s being said, which inevitably means hypothesising meaning from the fragments of speech that you do manage to grasp, a process which takes some getting used to and is entirely NOT HELPED by reading in English (or Italian) first. If you do that, you’re just setting yourself up for failure.

         You’ll be asking yourself why you can’t understand what you hear (in Italian) as well as when you read (in English), so get demotivated. But worse, in real life listening situations, you don’t get time to prepare, or text support, or translations. So of course you get distracted and lost – you’re attempting something that’s hard, and doing so in a way which makes it even harder.

         OK, try it like this:

         1.) Don’t ever view our content in English, and don’t ever use a dictionary.
         2.) Set the audio to play and read the text at the same time as you’re listening, which forces you to keep up. Listen all the way through from beginning to end. No need to ‘understand’, though, just read and listen. Repeat 2.) as often as you wish, but no English and no dictionaries. You don’t have to understand, remember, you’re just practising listening in real time. Listening and understanding are not the same thing. Understanding is ALWAYS PARTIAL, and your objective is to gradually develop the ability to deal with that (guessing, figuring it out in real time.)
         3.) Read with no audio if you want. But only Italian, and no dictionaries. It’s not a ‘study’ activity, there’s no test, you don’t have to understand. It’s just a warm up for the final stage…
         4.) Listen with no text, so only listening, all the way through. It’s harder, but by this point you’ll understand at least some of what you’re hearing, even if it’s just a small part (that’s fine, it gets easier in time.)
         5.) Now stop. Don’t do anything more with the bulletin (or you’ll be tempted to ‘study’ it, which will just make the next one more difficult. Your goal was to practice the skills you need to deal with real time listening. You’ve done that, so go do something else, until the next bulletin comes out in a few days.
         6.) Come back in three months and tell us how you got on!