Is it possible to learn Italian without grammar or word lists?

Some people dislike grammar. They used to not be good at it in school, the language classes were stupid and it didn't bring them much language acquisition.

Grammar: you have to make an effort to understand and apply it, many people don't feel like that either. Those are the main reasons why people don't like it. Oh yes, and then you also have those numerous exceptions.

However, some of them do want to learn to speak the language. They then hear stories from others who have been to Italy and who have lived in the house of Italians for a longer period of time and thus picked up the language without studying grammar.

That sounds good! you can indeed learn Italian by speaking a lot with Italians. Listen to them, make mistakes and just do it yourself a lot. Allow yourself to be corrected and expand your vocabulary to a level where you can communicate quite well.

Down with grammar!

Some Italian vloggers are clear about it. If you want to learn a language, you just have to go to the country and do it as much as possible. Alberto from Italiano Automatico, a YouTube channel with 102.000 followers, leaves no doubt. Many people swear by Alberto's bold statements, but I doubt his method, which is nice if you have a level A2 or higher, but which you can do little with as a beginner.

Also Paolo from litalianovero.it, a newer podcast leaves no doubt. On his homepage he writes in good Italian: let's throw away grammar.

Well, on closer examination it turns out that Alberto and Paolo are not language teachers, but influencers with a strong opinion.

I think most language teachers realize that with beginners you have to speak slowly and use a limited vocabulary and that translating into Dutch is effective.

I also read about cognitive load. You have to be careful not to overload the working memory of students when you use target language = language of instruction.

Back in the days

When another teacher stood in front of the class and briefly explained how it all works, grammar was explained in a frontal way that required little creative thinking from a student and was not very stimulating.

A teacher put the chart on the board, explained how to conjugate, and then you started applying those grammatical rules in writing.

Put the following 10 sentences in the past perfect tense. You see the students with their tongues out of their mouths, carrots still sweating in front of you. Another 4 for the grammar test.

The disadvantages of the 'formal approach'

Many students in Italy who want to become a language teacher choose to obtain a DITALS or CEDILS certificate. A kind of didactic note for language teaching. In this study you need to know the historical developments in language didactics.

This history starts with the approccio formalistico, the formal approach. This form of language teaching started in the 18th century. The grammatical rules and vocabulary are presented in the native language of the students.

During my DITALS exam, I had to learn the drawbacks of this approach, which is now outdated in language classes. The latest approach, according to Italian universities, is the global approach in which students should be immersed in the target language in every possible way.

Vocabulary and grammar are seen in this approach as an inseparable whole, which should not be considered separately but should be viewed in a practical context.

'You just have to go to Italy'

Now you have three kinds of people.

• Those who still swear by the old-fashioned teaching of grammar.
• Those who have developed their own method based on getting acquainted with other methods.
• Those who have become afraid of grammar because of this kind of exercises and teachers and have stopped learning a language.

Because they think they will be disappointed and have to feel that fear again of not doing such a grammar assignment correctly. Yet these are people who would also very much like to learn another language. What a waste!

Those students who hate grammar (and Italian grammar is extra difficult) often think that immersion in the language is the only method for them to learn Italian. 'You just have to go to Italy', I hear.

Immersion

Fortunately, you no longer have to go to Italy for immersion, a good method. Or join the program: 'I leave'. With the internet you can immerse yourself in Italian everywhere.

Of course I understand that watching Rai Uno or YouTube at home is less fun than sitting on a terrace in Piazza Navona. Unfortunately, life isn't all about vacationing.

It is indeed possible to take a little holiday feeling in the evenings after work and enjoy it learn Italian. But learning Italian is also more than just maintaining a holiday feeling.

I often give the students homework at the beginning of a course: look up what you like in Italian! Radio, internet, music. Expose yourself to Italian and let your curiosity guide you.

We also do some linguistics in class. Which you then have to apply at home if you use YouTube or Italian TV is going to see if you practice conversation in class, by means of the monitor function. Next topic.

What happens to people in the Netherlands who study Italian without grammar?

As a small child you don't need grammar rules. Children are immersed in the language and learn grammatical structures through repetition. However, we are no longer children and we do not live in the country whose language we want to learn.

If you learn the language in the Netherlands without grammar, mistakes will occur. Outside of Italy, it's hard to pick up on the grammatical language feel you get from immersion in the country itself. A student at level A1 with an aversion to grammar and a lot of experience expert on Google Translate (which is certainly not conducive to your grammar sense) texted me this.

Mi piace la lingua italiana en nostre amici vicino a tuscany dice pietro, tu parli come un bambino. Sono felice di pratica parlare italiano e ho bisogno tempo di pensare . Nostra amica parlati come lotje, semper troppo veloce. Provo qualcosa. Mio memoria e google translate stati un matrimonia felice.

To make clear what he was doing, I translated his incoherent stream of words:

I like the Italian language in our friends near Tuscany says Peter, you talk like a child. I'm lucky to practice Italian and I need time to think. Our friend talks to you like a lottery ticket, always too fast. I feel something. My memory and google translate have been a happy marriage.

In this way you ask a lot of your conversation partner. If you smile kindly at it, it might be okay, but not everyone has this patience. At your holiday spot where you pay money for a holiday home and your host is kind to you anyway, yes. Or with friends.

However, you will not make contact with the waiter, because he has no time at all to think about what you might mean. Most people are not interested in muddled stories. For acceptance you will usually have to put in a little more effort.

How important is correct speaking?

People differ in what they can tolerate in terms of misunderstandings and language skills. Some make mistakes easily, are not ashamed and easily start a conversation. They don't mind when misunderstandings arise and have no trouble expressing themselves in a limited way or they quickly feel satisfied with their language proficiency and experience no frustration with imperfections.

If you can do it that way, a level A2 is fine. But can you also achieve A2 level in this way from abroad, from the Netherlands or Belgium? You can only imitate immersion here if you go to a language institute for a week for an intensive language course where you do nothing else all day and are grammatically corrected and taught. What about the regular group courses where you only have 90 minutes a week?

'Speaking well' is relative

I also put out a call on Facebook for people to come up with their story about self-study without grammar. Jacqueline Broekhuizen, also an Italian teacher, told this story:

A Dutch friend of mine with a house in Tuscany, speaks a nice word of Italian and can handle herself perfectly in any situation. She learned the language without grammar or book, but just by talking to the neighbors and stuff, watching TV and so on. Last summer she and her husband made a trip through Italy and ended up in a nice hotel in Puglia. The owner complimented her on her good Italian (ma come parla bene, brava, complimenti) and she felt very proud. At one point the owner asked how she could speak Italian so well, after which my friend told me that she had a house in Tuscany. Aha, said the owner and how long have you had that house? To which my friend replied: for 17 years. The owner's immediate response was: 17 anni, e ancora fa tutti questi errori (17 years and you're still making all these mistakes!)

Grammar seems inevitable to me

You can set yourself the goal of reaching level A2. Then you can have fun, superficial conversations without it getting complicated. I do believe that you can get to level A2 without doing grammar and by imitating a lot in Italy. But then you have to go to Italy for a year and stay with a host family.

All grammatical forms up to and including level A2 are frequently used in daily use. Everyone uses the past perfect and simple past and future tense on a daily basis. If you hear this a lot and repeat it a lot, you can also reach level A2 at an older age without grammar. In Italy, prolonged immersion allows you to imitate a child's learning process.

With 90 minutes of valuable time in a group lesson a week, immersion is impossible. Okay, you can improve your reading and listening skills with the internet in your own time. The teacher will certainly recommend that to you.

If you take private lessons you can pay someone to improve your oral skills with you and focus only on that skill. However, that teacher will also want to help you to speak Italian better and will explain your grammar.

If you do a course in which you read a book, you as a student will ask yourself: why is this sentence structured like this? And there goes the teacher again. Grammar and knowledge acquisition must necessarily replace that strategy of immersion abroad. At one school it is 10% of the program, at another school it is 60% of the program, but few schools will completely deprive you of Italian grammar.

Grammar deals with parts of speech (article, noun, adjective, etc.) and phrases (subject, direct object, indirect object, etc.). You learn how words and sentences behave the same in which situations.

It is the scientific model of language that approximates well to the multifaceted reality that language is in practice. With that model, your brain can work to produce correct Italian. You have to think about it and work for it, I don't think that sounds very illogical myself. If you understand the structure of a language you seem to have an engine for your progress and that is easy, because you have to drive a lot of miles to learn a language.

I used to practice my oral skills in high school, but that was a bit separate from grammar. I don't remember a teacher telling me I could use grammar in conversation and I don't think I found out until I was 22! Then I progressed by leaps and bounds.

According to Krashen, a scientist in the field of second language acquisition, this is called the monitor function. As you speak, think about how to pronounce something grammatically correct. You then say something, think about the grammar and then think: Oh no! It's must be…

You will apply the knowledge you have learned and in this way you can take the step from learning a scheme to acquiring useful and useful knowledge.

TPR Storytelling

There does seem to be a trend, because in the Netherlands I see attention for the TPRS method. The abbreviation stands for Total Physical Response Storytelling. The idea of ​​this method is that you immerse students in the target language and learn a basic vocabulary in circular movements.

Grammar is only used there as a troubleshooter for problems that students experience. Vocabulary is built through conversation. I find this very interesting and a school in Hoofddorp organizes courses for teachers to use this method. This summer I did some research on the method and I want to try it in the classroom and also, if possible, take the three-day course.

However, this educational innovation is not all that new either. The direct method from the early 1900s also focused on the oral language transmission of the native speaker and the active participation of the student. The method responded to the formal approach in vogue before that, which involved translating a lot and explaining only the grammar.

New from TPRS vs. the direct method is that they are working on a basic vocabulary for beginners and they are doing conversations in circles. There is a lot of repetition and the format for a conversation is worked out little by little. However, the question is whether you can transfer that grammatical language feeling in 90 minutes a week without explanation. And whether you really learn as much as in a more traditional lesson.

Here's a video to give you an idea of ​​the method. There are very nice commercials of it, but that's how it goes in practice.

Grammar is no longer an end in itself

So we do use grammar in class. I believe in it because I have personally noticed how it has helped me in learning the language, especially because of that monitor function above. Today, however, language teachers try to teach grammar inductively.

How is that going in my class? We read an Italian text, watch a video or have a conversation and then the teacher tries to let the students discover the grammar for themselves. I do this in Dutch. I can then ask:

• What does this word refer to?
• Are there any other words like this in the text?
• Are there any differences between those words and why do they differ?
• How do you know that?

Ultimately, the student then comes to his own grammatical insight. The teacher should know that it is a pronoun. Italians call this the Socratic method, in the Netherlands we call it a teaching-learning conversation. If you understand what it is, I'm going to force you as a teacher to use it and apply it in Italian conversations. Then you have to store the knowledge in the long-term memory.

Grammar has thus acquired a much more instrumental purpose. It is a means to communicate better and more effectively. Communication is paramount, not grammatical correctness.

Doubting students

Finally, there is the reaction or feedback from the students. Research has shown that students themselves have many doubts about the effectiveness of the modern approach to activating didactics. Although research shows that they learn more, an old-fashioned teacher with a good story and little interaction often does better in student evaluations. (Deslauriers, McCarty, Miller, Callaghan and Kestin 2019).

As I read it, the negative appreciation of activating didactics is because you have to work harder for it. There is more to discuss and therefore more questions have arisen during the lesson. The questions and doubts are for many people more visible than their (greater) learning efficiency.

For example, the observation of Dora Gatti, my Italian language didactics teacher, turns out to be true once again. You should not do what the students want as a teacher, but you should do what you think is right for them.

Word lists and learn words without lists

In my Italian didactics study at the University of Siena (DITALS 1), you learn that learning words without context (the old-fashioned word lists) makes little sense. If you don't get acquainted with new words in a meaningful sentence, then it won't stick. I have the idea that many Italians were not given word lists at school.

Nevertheless, word lists were and are taught in most Dutch schools. Nowadays there are also schools that let students make their own word lists or use an app such as Quizlet. I also read in the Netherlands about theories that you do have to offer words, but then a limited number that fit together thematically and that you also have to come back and repeat a few times.

To learn a foreign language you will have to learn words, acquire vocabulary. A lot of words. But how you do that is open. Sure, you can learn lists in the back of your book, but you'll find that it won't stick (especially if you're a little older, though there are some tips for that). How can you get all that Italian stuff in your head?

My experience is that the best students are not those who learn their words from a word list. The good students pick up words from the use of the language. Learning words without lists. They expose themselves to Italian. Trying to read articles, listen to music, have conversations with Italians. As a result, they have more context to link a new word to, and context is essential for learning new words, according to brain research. They use their own interests as a basis for acquiring new knowledge. Be eager to learn, hungry for knowledge. Click through, search, read on. Don't be hindered by difficulties, think positively, see challenges.

How does that work? Associative with me: you start with an interest in Eros Ramazzotti, you can see on his Facebook page that he made a duet with Elisa. You will look up Elisa on Spotify. You listen to a video of her and then search the internet for the lyrics of the song and watch her video clip on YouTube.

In the song Elisa talks about gioia, look that up in your dictionary. Later you see that Gioia is also a girl's name in a newspaper article about hip fractures in the elderly that you started reading because your mother just got a new hip. You learn the Italian word for hip and you wonder if there are proverbs with the word 'hip', like in the Netherlands 'get it on your hips' and so you google 'provebi anca'. This is how you find out that in Italian you say 'ho la luna deposita'.

To speak a foreign language you need vocabulary. So says an article in the NRC that a minimum of 3.000 words is needed to express yourself and do a study. A highly educated Dutch person would have a vocabulary of about 60.000 words.

The Language Bureau mentioned in the article makes information accessible to foreigners at an A2 level, based on 7.000 words. An interesting article that raises the question in your mind: how can I increase my Italian vocabulary?

Learning another language definitely includes expanding your vocabulary. But how can you do this effectively? How do you learn as many words as possible in as little time as possible? I found the story of Hasan Fakhane, a refugee who showed that he really really wanted to learn Dutch, very inspiring. He pasted 2.000 Dutch words on notes in his home like you in this article can read and see. But perhaps not ideal for your nice VT Wonen interior.

Here are my tips for increasing your vocabulary.

1. Follow your interests

Follow your own interests and write down words that you come across that you do not know. If a word interests you, it is easier to remember. So when you listen to a song you ask yourself: what would innamorare actually mean? Then find it and write it down. Make sure you get in touch with Italian as much as possible on social media, newspapers, music and movies, love everything Italian and be amazed.

2. Use your imagination

What I liked when I had nothing to do (on the train, at a waiting room, the bus stop, the queue at the supermarket etc) is to imagine situations where I should speak and then think about what to say and how. Speak to the stock filler if I want to know where the canned chickpeas are in the supermarket. Asking the bus driver if he wanted to warn me when approaching a certain stop. What kind of reactions could that person give and how would I react to that? You will then automatically ask yourself things and look up new words.

3. Learn useful words and use a good app.

Learn words you need. Methods often contain all kinds of words that you need to make an exercise. You do not always need this in practice. That's why I would like to recommend to everyone this book by ALMA edizioni to purchase. This book contains the 1000 most commonly used Italian words, without the translation into Dutch. Although it is a glossary without the meanings in Dutch, you can be sure that you will use the words. Looking up the correct meaning of the words is another useful exercise in itself. If you are already somewhat advanced, there is also an advanced version with the 1000 – 3000 most used words in Italian. If you find it complicated to purchase this book, you can also use this online glossary with most used verbs print it out, or this list with the 1000 most used words. I am in the process of translating this list and including it in Quizlet that many students use. I am especially enthusiastic about Quizlet, this is an excellent tool (an excellent app) to learn words. You create an account and then you can easily learn your words, in a playful way.

4. Ask a lot of questions

If you are in Italy: talk a lot, make a lot of mistakes and ask a lot of questions about how to do it correctly or ask about the meaning of words. Do not be afraid of losing face and always ask yourself if criticism is justified. As a beginner and near native speaker, you often receive praise. However, as an intermediate, I sometimes heard a frustrated “I don't understand you”, “you can't say that” or Italians switched to English without asking. Some people are tired and don't really want to understand you. Not everyone has patience with foreigners. As you can see for yourself in the way Dutch people deal with foreigners.

5. Love all things Italian     

Become an irritating italophile! Okay, you don't have to. You don't have to embrace everything uncritically. Just pay your taxes, don't put on gloves in the fruit section of the supermarket (don't have to go to the AH), be friendly to immigrants and don't use Anglicisms because Italians do, Okay????  Make a selection! Not Ferrari, but Lamborghini, not Juventus, but Atalanta Bergamo, not Eros Ramazzotti, but Mina Mazzini, but panettone, no pandoro, but pasta, no risotto. Develop your opinion and make sure you can substantiate it with authentic facts from il bel paese. Then you can become a Salvini fan who likes AC Milan, pasta carbonara and Ligabue. I will do my best to understand your differentness and I will be proud of you for giving good reasons for your opinion, in Italian.

6. Listen music from my Spotify playlist    

Marvel, listen, listen again, marvel. What is that? Hey, what's he singing now? That's weird! Listen again. Would that be right? Ask, talk about it. While you iron, do the dishes or peel the potatoes. And do you mind what's on my playlist? Then skip! If you really like that one, click through to the artist and listen to his / her other songs.

7. Find an Italian language buddy via the Tandem Linguistico Facebook Group

This is a group where you can find a language buddy with whom you can chat, email, call or meet to help each other with the language. You help an Italian with his Dutch, he/she helps you with your Italian.

8. Follow your interests on social media

Italian artists, Italian news sites, Italian TV personalities, Italian chefs. You get the picture. As long as it's in Italian. Try to read some, decipher texts. Do not translate an entire article, but choose a maximum of 8 words per article to search for. Keywords that will help you for the rest of your (Italian) life. Look on YouTube for images, also an inexhaustible source of information. Social media is interactive, you can also respond. Don't be discouraged if a whiner points out a spelling mistake. It's typical of that bastard, there's nothing wrong with your Italian. Surely you can make mistakes? Argue with Italians if you like that. On breastfeeding, climate change, Salvini, gluten-free eating: all the controversial things people have strong opinions about.

9. Look at Italian movies, series, docs and cooking shows on Netflix and listen to podcast.

Set the audio and subtitles to Italian, that will help you the most. Don't you understand everything? That how it's supposed to be! You learn from that. But in the meantime you learn things. You can also look at the RaiUno if you can receive it. A good TV program for beginners is the quiz L'eredità at 18:45. With multiple choice questions.

That's how you do it, learning words without lists. I wish you lots of luck. Do you also have a good tip? Leave it below in a comment.