Useful online resources for learners of Italian
Monday, 21st December 2009
There many resources for learning Italian available online, including lessons, dictionaries, grammar guides, tests, games, newspapers and radio stations. Most are free, and can be used as well as, or instead of, language classes.
The BBC website has some excellent free resources for students of Italian, including a range of courses for every level, a dictionary, the Italian Gauge, which helps you find your level, games, phrases, a guide to Italian radio and TV, a gadget that helps you find Italian courses in your area, and even weather forcasts in Italian.
Radio Lingua offers Italian lessons for beginners in the form of short podcasts lasting two or three minutes, as well as a course of slightly longer lessons based on Italian phrases that are sent to you every day.
Cyber Italian provides Italian lessons that you can study on your own, as well as courses with tutors and other students, and individual lessons. It covers the Italian language and Italian culture, and includes opportunities to practise your Italian in an enjoyable way by trying Italian recipes, singing songs, watching videos and writing poems. A free trial is available, but there is a charge for these lessons.
Other sites offering Italian lessons and courses include ItalianPod, Italian for You and eLanguageSchool.net.
Online Italian dictionaries are very useful for language learners. Some are bilingual – usually English-Italian, others are monolingual. Bilingual dictionaries include FreeDict, WordReference.com, Frasi.net and PaoloRisso. Dizionario is a program you can download and use as a bilingual dictionary for Italian and a wide variety of other languages from Afrikaans to Zulu, as well Italian dialects.
A good way to tune your ears to the sounds of Italian, and to acquire vocabulary and grammar in context is to listen to radio stations in Italian. This is also a way to learn about Italy. There are plenty of online Italian language stations to choose from, including Rai.it, Radio Popolare and Radio Vaticana.
Another good way to practise and improve your Italian is to read online newspapers and magazines such as Corriere della Sera, l’Unità, La Republica and La Stampa.
The Italian Language Guide provides information about links to further online resources for Italian learners.
Tags: phrases, course, language, languages, italy, italian, learning, culture, guide, english
Posted by Simon Ager 2009-12 under
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