New Year’s resolutions: Learn Italian from scratch

New Year has come, and with it come also new resolutions. If one of your resolutions for this year is to learn Italian from scratch, today I’ll give you some resources you can use to reach your goal.

But first, here are some important things you should keep in mind when you start learning a new language.

Motivation

Oxford dictionaries define motivation as the desire or willingness to do something. If you’re really motivated to do something, you’re also more willing to put more efforts and energy to reach your goal. This means that you can learn faster. So, motivation is your gasoline, without it you go nowhere.

Set your goals

Learning a language seems easier when you set small achievable goals. For, example, you can start deciding that in a week you’re going to learn how to introduce yourself in Italian. Perceiving that you can actually reach the goals you set, helps you keep your motivation high.

Exploit your preferences

Do you like reading or do you prefer watching a film? In reality, it doesn’t matter what your preferences are, what’s matters is that you can exploit them to improve your learning process.
In fact, books can help you learn new vocabulary in context, while movies, for example, can help you learn words’ pronunciation. 

Speak Italian with native speakers

In the past you almost had not choice as to move to Italy to actually speak with native Italians. Luckily for your financial resources, nowadays this is not always necessary. In fact, thanks to technology you can easily speak Italian with Italians, by comfortably sitting in an armchair in your home. You just need a computer and an internet connection. That’s all.

And now, let’s see some of the resources you can use to start learning Italian from scratch.

Sos Italian – Learn Italian from scratch (Online course)

This is a course I’ve just created. It’s thought for people who want to learn Italian from scratch.

It explains pronunciation, basic Italian grammar and basic Italian vocabulary.

When I created this course I wanted it to be useful also for people who were planning to visit Italy. So, in it you’re also going to learn things like how to introduce yourself, how to order your breakfast, how to ask for the price and so on.

Let’s see how it’s organized:

Each unit, except the one concerning the alphabet, is made up of three sections:
1. One or more video lessons – for a total of 2.30 hours.
2. An interactive exercise for each video lesson
3. A complete didactic unit designed to help you both strengthen your knowledge of the topics explained in the video lessons and introduce you to new vocabulary and grammar.

If you follow the link below, you can have it at a special discounted price:

Sos Italian – Learn Italian from scratch

Free resources

Duolingo: if you really want to learn Italian from scratch, Duolinguo is one of the programs you can use to start your learning process. It’s free and it allows you to learn some vocabulary, some sentences and to listen to the Italian pronunciation.  
BBC’s languages: this website offers many resources if you want to learn Italian from scratch. You can find both audio, video and written resources.
About.com: if you’ve decided to learn Italian from scratch, here you can find useful information about vocabulary, grammar, useful sentences, etc.

For Language exchanges

These resources can help you practice your Italian with native speakers.

italki
Verbling
My Language Exchange
Interpals

If you’re searching for other useful websites and online vocabularies, have a look at my page of free resources.

Instead, if you prefer online lessons, have a look at the services I offer.

I hope you’ll find these resources useful to start learning Italian from scratch. If you know of any other resource, please let me know and I’ll add it.