A language learners’ forum

IronMike wrote:I perused each page of this group and have a question. Pardon me if this came up here and I missed it: Anyone have any recommended easy readers? Titles? I'm thinking easy readers along the lines of:



I like how this series has the books divvied up by level (A, B, C, etc). I absolutely hate those dual readers...I always get distracted by the English side, so I prefer to just have a book with simplified language and the occasional footnote explaining in English a term or phrase. I like what I see in the preview on Amazon of the Easy Italian Reader by Saggese. Anyone use that? Like it?

Looking forward to starting my Italian journey!

I love, love, love the "Italiano Facile" readers from Alma Edizioni. They're pitched at more realistic CEFR levels than other publishers do, the stories are entertaining, and the voice actors perform with gusto (shadowing them will improve your intonation no end). On the Alma website you can download some of the older series' audio for free.

https://www.almaedizioni.it/en/catalogu ... DULTI/LET/

OK, have my Italian DLPT scheduled. Last day of class is 20 May, DLPT listening and reading on 22 May. Aiming for a 1/1. Starting this week I'm upping the intensity on Italian. We'll see how I do.

Do you all have recommended twitter feeds you follow? I'm looking for short bits of Italian, following iguanamon's multi-track approach. I'd like to have a small blurb to work on daily. I found two or three newspapers to follow a few days ago, but they haven't tweeted.

IronMike wrote:Do you all have recommended twitter feeds you follow? I'm looking for short bits of Italian, following iguanamon's multi-track approach. I'd like to have a small blurb to work on daily. I found two or three newspapers to follow a few days ago, but they haven't tweeted.

I know that you specified Twitter, but if you don't mind Instagram, Erika Porreca (from Podcast Italiano) has an account where she posts photos and short descriptions. This could be good for a sentence or three at a time.
https://www.instagram.com/erikaporreca/

I don't know if you are familar with Podcast Italiano, but he's got a ton of stuff for all levels. For beginners (principiante) there's a "postcard" series where he writes a short postcard (cartolina) and reads it aloud, so there's text+audio.
https://podcastitaliano.com/principiant ... ntermedio/

IronMike wrote:Do you all have recommended twitter feeds you follow? I'm looking for short bits of Italian, following iguanamon's multi-track approach. I'd like to have a small blurb to work on daily. I found two or three newspapers to follow a few days ago, but they haven't tweeted.

I don't know which newspapers you found, but I follow La Repubblica and they turn up in my feed every day. The same with @SkyTG24, an Italian news channel owned by the British Sky News. Il Fatto Quotidiano also seems like a good source for news in Italian.

Dang, thanks you guys! I love le cartoline!

Ogrim, what's the exact Twitter userid for La Repubblica that you follow? I found two yesterday and one hadn't tweeted anything since 2014 and can't remember the other but I followed it. So far nothing shows up. (Sorry, can't check Twitter at work so can't give you the userid of the one I did follow.)

Grazie mille a tutti!

Try making your home page the "Random Italian Page" on wikipedia: https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speciale:PaginaCasuale

It isn't short text but it means you get a random page full of Italian each time you open your web-browser. I have done this for French, and sometimes I read it, most times I don't because I have a specific purpose and no time. But even if you only look at the first few sentences it will get you going.

I also subscribe to some stuff on YouTube and that will pop up on occasion. It is useful to watch the videos, but also try to decrypt the comments. I think I mentioned two cooking shows I watch.

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCW2xLi ... JhFOz0kokw (This guy is great! Don't know why he doesn't have more subscribers)

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCWOAiV ... YpLcTvI4Zg

The username for La Repubblica which I follow is @repubblica, if you do a search on that you should finde it easily.

Thanks Ogrim. At home now and sure enough, that's the same La Repubblica I'm following. Has yet to show up on my timeline. Gonna have to check settings to see if I clicked something that is preventing it from showing up.

Edit: La Repubblica finally showed up on my feed!

Thank you all for your help and recommendations. If you haven't read it in my log, I managed a 1 in listening and 2 in reading in my DLPT today. w00t!