Roberto Freddolini

I like the fact that Italian is my native language and I am really keen on sharing my language and culture. During my classes I don't merely teach the rules, but I always try with passion in mind to put the students into a Italian Full Immersion (Language, sayings, food, wine, gestures....and so on).

I have started teaching Italian when I first moved to Bangkok in 2008. Since then I got in love with teaching Italian abroad and now it's my main job.

The main reasons for wanting learning Italian are moving to Italy for study reasons, for living reasons or for a working experience.

Most of my students learn Italian because they want to go to study design, fashion or any other art related study, in Italy. But I also teach younger students who have an Italian father willing to have them speaking in Italian. Those are the most common reasons I have found during my teaching experience but of course there might be more and more...

Well, I believe Italian is one of the easiest languages to learn. Reason being a student can start to speak in Italian from day one. Unlike English language or Asian languages, Italian letters of the alphabet keep, in general, the same sound when you put them in a word. Therefore once you learn the sound of the letters of the alphabet, which are less, in number, than the one in English language, you can start reading and so speaking simple words.

The grammar is maybe the biggest issue a student might find in learning Italian language, but that's the job of a good teacher to make it easier to get into grammar rules little by little without make the student feel overwhelmed...

Normally they're interested in food culture and recipes, history of art, history of music, classical music, fashion and design. Italy is famous for it's "creative side" and most of my students are interested in that. Of course I also had some students who were interested in wine and so I made a taylored course based on wine production and history.

When I have to explain grammar rules (articles, prepositions, adjectives, adverbs and verbs) is certainly the hardest part because there are lots of rules to be learnt and lots of exceptions to be accepted...but I have my strategy :)

Motivation, having a goal in mind it makes the work easier because I know exactly what to teach and the students knows exactly what he/she wants. Moreover self discipline is still the best general characteristics of any good student.

As I said before the rules behind grammar. Therefore structuring sentences becomes harder and harder along the way. The more things you want to say the more rules you have to know...but there are shortcuts, and one of them is the sound of the language. Many rules can be understood just by learning the concordance of sounds between words (i.e.: adjectives and nouns).

Motivate yourself, give yourself a goal. Start with an easier goal and then procede further. Step by step everything is possible but the key characteristics is "motivation". We need a reason for doing things and the more important this reason/s is for us the easier it becomes to progress over time.

Well, hard to say...It depends on many many things: Motivation, discipline, age, intensity of study, the teacher...

Yes, you heard it right, the teacher is fundamental in making all the process easier and possibly shorter...