SaltySalt wrote:Cavesa wrote:When you said a "major european language", I was guessing the FIGS. But nope. I am clueless about Danish, but there are some learners around here and surely a list of good resources.
Could you by any chance provide a fitting roadmap for Italian? (fitting, given the learning issues/predispositions I described)
Many thanks for your help!
Thank you for your trust! Before giving you my idea, I just want to tell you to take me with a grain of salt. Italian is my language with the biggest passive/active disparity (acitve A2/B1ish, passive C1ish), and has never been officially tested. So, I draw from my Italian and other romance experience. Should you find a better source of info (like one of our successful Italian learners in the community), profit from it.
As I said, I am convinced you need one standard coursebook series, that goes from 0 to B2 or C1. One of the popular and good looking ones is
Nuovo Espresso (I have started the series and it is high on my list of what to do, as soon as I can return to Italian). It is solid, it will guide you through the levels, the typical weaknesses of this style of coursebook are rather well managed here, and it will definitely be a good guidance on getting to the next levels. Also, the publisher has done a good job with the online companion site with audio, key to exercises, etc. Assimil can be a good second course, but it is a bit less clear about the progress. If you don't like Nuovo Espresso, there are various other options on the market, the Italian publishers have been really working hard lately and improved the resources available much more, than for example the French ones (who seem to have been resting on the laurels a lot). Pick what you find pleasant and clear to use. And remember, that the series going to B2 and C1 will not only save you an uncomfortable switch to something else, but is also believing in its capacity to get the students this far
For further grammar practice (Italian is not too hard, but it still requires work and getting the common obstacles out of yout way will keep you from getting stuck at the end of the beginner level), I recommend
Una grammatica italiana per tutti, or any similar alternative. Alma (the publisher of Nuovo Espresso), has made a lot of grammar workbooks oriented on the various areas of the language, they are worth your attention too. Unfortunately, the awesome kwiziq doesn't offer Italian (yet). Grammar learning gets underestimated all the time: While I definitely agree that there is much more to language learning than "just" grammar, I keep seeing people, who believe they just need more speaking practice, while they are making two or three basic mistakes per sentence.
The conjugation or prepositions can really hold people back.
For further vocab drilling, I have a few recommendations. You can make your own deck in Anki. That is in some ways the best, but I personally find it demotivating. But there are some very good
user made courses on Memrise (I don't like their official ones at all).
Clozemaster is a very good tool, some of the forum members are very successful with it, it is probably the biggest premade wordlist that you get to practice by cloze deletions. The free version is sufficient for many learners, but there are advantages to paying a rather modest price. Out of the more expensive options, I definitely recommend
Speakly. The 4000 words are well chosen, cloze deletions are great (and supplemented with grammar notes to the individual cards), and the minidialogues are wonderful. It is not CEFR based, but it is still very progressive and trully leads up to the end of the intermediate realm. I don't recommend Lingvist, I was rather disappointed with their French and therefore don't trust them at all (very briefly: I believe they are better at IT than at language teaching, their frequency list is weird, and their choice of what is a common use of a word is highly dubious).
One of the things that might be holding you back (it often is), is the pronunciation. I've just paid for
Speechling, as I think it can get the job done fast, with feedback to individual sentences, and with a wonderful way to compare myself to the original audio. The other features don't seem to be that great, but this one really stands out. You don't need to be perfect. But having too bad pronunciation is another thing, that often keeps the learners at the "eternal beginner" level.
When you are around B1, it will be time for tons of input, and also practice (Lingora and similar tools will come handy). Until then, I am sure that podcasts (like those for learners on RAI), or graded readers can be great as a supplemental activity. But getting spread too thin over all such supplemental activities leads far too often to lack of progress. It is a matter of opinion, but I personally prefer to push a bit harder at first and get to the more interesting books earlier, rather than stay for longer at the beginner level with books for toddlers.
I hope this helps a bit. Italian is a wonderful language, I wish you lots of fun with it. Truth be told, it is the language that has given me the most value for the invested time and efforts