Conversation Meetings

Conversation on topics of the moment, Reading and commenting articles from national press, watching at video news and talks, with tutor, and native guests. The italian point of view!

Contents and level: who this activity is for.

Level: full pre-intermediate to advanced (full A2 to C level)

Contents: Engage in a pleasant conversation about the issues of the moment, starting with reading the week's news in the national media. Enhance your vocabulary, increase your fluency and ability to interact in Italian, train your oral and written skills, comprehension, listening and interpretation. In addition, you will become progressively more familiar with Italian current events, with the language of newspapers, with the themes that are part of our daily lives until you achieve a good degree of autonomy in reading newspapers and news magazines.

Hard to understand an italian newspapers? Let's do it together!

Then let's do it together in a fun and relaxed way! from news to politics, from economy to culture.

  • If you start from a medium-high level, you will be able to enrich your vocabulary and your expressive skills, but if your level is lower, the guided reading, the activities prepared by the tutor, the comparison with the tutor and with the other participants, will allow you to develop your oral expression skills and to increase your chances of successfully dealing with journalistic texts.

    In fact, reading a newspaper article or listening to an interview on video is less demanding than reading a book: you can do it in about 15-20 minutes.

    So let's read them together and try to enter in the italian point of view!

Goals

  • Development of speaking, conversation and debate skills

  • Linguistic and cultural goals particularly related to journalistic communication;

  • Expansion of vocabulary, slang, idiomatic phrases, rhetorical figures.

  • Deepening of knowledge of the Italian spirit, of the way of feeling and seeing reality and human relationships;

  • Development of comprehension skills

  • Development of autonomous linguistic analysis

  • Development of oral and written production skills

Prices

Per person:
30,00 EUR/Hour for individual
15 EUR/Hour for couple/
12,50 EUR/hour for groups (6 max).

Conversation meetings and activities.

Tutor proposes conversation topics for the week. Participants can indicate their proposals and suggest articles or videos or other useful material for the conversation.

Tutor sends everyone a general presentation of the topic and support material for the discussion (generally it is a newspaper or weekly magazine article), a mini vocabulary to clarify the more complicated points, comprehension activities, related vocabulary and language, and elements to stimulate the discussion.

  • Step 1 - First reading - general comprehension: Read the content of the article for the first time or watch and listen to the audio/video material. If with this first cursory reading you have understood the topic, you can proceed to step 2. (time 5-10 minutes).

    Step 2 - Second Reading: Read the article again and focus on up to 7-10 unknown words and look them up in the dictionary. At this point you should have the necessary information that allows you to understand the content and you will have learned two or three new terms that are connected to a context. The tutor will help you by pointing out areas of vocabulary and language and comprehension activities that will help you identify the core information and opinions contained in the material. (10 minutes)

    Step 3 - Group conversation: summary of content; clarification of vocabulary and interpretation; discussion of the thesis statement; focus on lexical areas and language problems.

Reading a newspaper can become a beautiful and pleasant habit to improve your Italian and to enter more deeply into the Italian reality, but it must remain a pleasure. Most important: don’t try to immediately understand 100% of what you read: you would lose a lot of time and the pleasure of reading, without being able to memorize many ´new´ words. Let's concentrate on a few precise objectives that can be achieved without stress.

Levels & Mode:

  • A weekly meeting of 2 hours

  • Guided reading and commentary on articles from the national press, followed by conversation and debate, is intended for participants who have a knowledge of Italian of at least a full A2 level (pre-intermediate).

  • IN PERSON or ONLINE or in BLENDED LEARNING: in person and online, according to the time and place requirements of the participants

Learning objects

  • Articles and comments from newspapers and magazines

  • Video news

  • Short films

  • Texts from social media

  • Headlines and subtitles

  • Songs

  • Interviews

  • Podcast

Right now we are reading

An article by Nathalie Tocci for the newspaper "La Stampa" of Turin, about the invasion of Ukraine by Russia and the consequences for Europe.

Contact for info and availability