To learn Italian you need to speak as well as write

Can you learn Italian fluently by speaking it alone?

If you have only registered with Alvast, you do Duolingo completely worked through, intuitive what grammar understood and are you nice pronunciation practising. But then you're stuck and can't get any further.

There are more and more training courses that focus purely on speaking. The so-called conversation courses are very popular. Through games and exercises you are forced to speak and overcome your shame. You hear that you are busy with Italian all the time and you have to make an effort. At the end of the lesson you will go home tired but satisfied.

But have you also learned something?

Multiple intelligence

A few years ago, the educationalist Howard Gardner very popular. His theory: that there are different kinds of intelligences and as long as you do what suits you, you will master what you want to learn in no time.

For example, some people are more motorically intelligent (and they have to play movement games to master a language) and only people with a logical-mathematical knuckle benefit from a lot of grammar.

However, this turned out to be a placebo pill. It works because you think it works. You think you are a 'speaker' and so you go to work with your exercises more enthusiastically because you think it suits you and because you like it more. As a result, you achieve better results because you believe in it and work harder, not because it is necessarily so.

cynical teacher

You are within your rights to be a satisfied and happy student, but also ask yourself what really works! There is no holy grail in my opinion, there is no simple unambiguous way like : you just have to speak a lot.

The more expensive business language schools still work with Gardner, giving people the feeling of being in control of their own learning, but in fact it's a sales technique that doesn't necessarily lead to better results, just more satisfied students.

Just like the commitment of commercial companies for language training is higher because people pay a higher price. They will then give up less quickly, will continue (because I paid so much for it). And so an expensive system with a lot of time for the teacher is self-sustaining.

In language training This is Italian (very cheap by the way) that I've made contains many output activities, but I can't simulate a real live situation in an asynchronous, online course, because you need interaction with a human for that.

Who does unexpected things where you have to improvise. In addition, there are other advantages of having a teacher, in which inspiration and the ability to control are especially useful for many people. I try to inspire, surprise and control from a distance.

You can also learn to speak from writing

All right, then I'm going to explain to you what writing helps you when learning to anticipate and improvise, which is so characteristic of a real conversation.

Writing is a form of output, just like speaking is. But where when speaking you often fall back on automatisms and things you already know, writing is often more thoughtful. Moreover, during a conversation you often find yourself in a situation where you do not have the time at all to make balanced decisions.

When writing, you master the words and grammar and how to apply them by thinking about what you are doing. The process of standing still, looking up, improving, nuance is the process you need to improve your language knowledge. Writing makes it much more visible through reflection what exactly is happening.

You won't hear me say that conversation isn't important, but you may be able to improve your Italian conversation further – paradoxically – by just practicing writing.