If you are interested in learning Italian, you probably want to learn it as quickly and efficiently as possible. In this article I want to explore the option of gaining basic fluency in Italian in 3 months or less.
The truth is that many students end up taking Italian language classes for many years and still cannot understand real Italian conversation. I also know many students who have achieved fluency in Italian or in other foreign languages in less than 3 months.
Before I reveal this plan, I should note to you that if you already are fluent in another romance language like French or Spanish, you will find this much easier to achieve. Even if you have only studied a foreign language but not necessarily a romance language, you will still get an extra boost. On the other hand, if you have never studied a foreign language before, you may find this a bit hard at first because you are not used to learning foreign languages.
In the end though, you should remember that it is possible to achieve fluency in Italian in 3 months as long as you have a plan of action and stay with it.
Now lets take a look at some numbers that will help you understand what getting basic fluency in Italian requires.
In European languages, the 1000 most commonly used words make up 85% of common speech. The 3000 most commonly used words make up 95% of common speech. In order to achieve basic fluency in Italian, we need to hit the 95% mark which means a total of 3000 words.
Additionally, many experts in languages say that in order to become fluent in languages like Italian, Spanish or French, 200 hours of active study time is required.
So, because you are going to study for 3 months, you will have 90 days of study. This means learning about 33 new Italian words per day. If you devote 2 hours to this study process, you will get 180 hours of study in by the end of 3 months which is basically the 200 hours recommended by language experts.
Many of you might think that learning 33 new words per day is too challenging. However, if you think about it, given that you have 2 hours of study time each day, that means you have to learn about 16 words per hour or about 1 word every 4 minutes. This is not so hard, is it?
Take into consideration the fact that many cognates exist between Italian and English like the English word “international” being “internazionale” in Italian and you will see that you will be able to pick up many Italian words in less than 5 seconds.
Of course, you’ll probably have a little less time to study vocabulary since you will want to devote time to reviewing words that you learned on previous days and also look into practicing forming sentences and making sure your grammar is correct. All in all, you should have enough time to reach your basic fluency goal in Italian.
If you are able to study Italian actively for 2 hours per day and reach the goal of learning 3000 Italian words by the end of 3 months’ time, you will have achieved basic Italian fluency. The important thing to remember here is that you need to stay committed each and every day to your Italian studies and take each step seriously. If you are able to stick with it each day and progress, then you will attain fluency in Italian.
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