Due chiacchiere con...

Audio recordings with natural conversations between Italian native speakers for intermediate-advanced learners who wish to improve their listening skills.

What if you could close your eyes and imagine sitting in a cafe in Italy listening to a natural and spontaneous conversation in Italian?

When I first moved to London I found it difficult to understand native English speakers. The speed of their speech , intonation, accent and colloquialisms, was very difficult for me to grasp at first. Fast forward to today, 10 years later, and I can understand English so much better, even in different English accents. In my teaching experience, my students struggle with this too and desire the ability to easily understand natural conversations between Italian native speakers.

This is how Due Chiacchiere con… was born. I want to provide you with a resource that can help you with your listening skills.

Close your eyes and imagine you were sitting in a cafe in Italy, eavesdropping on a conversation between the people sitting next to you. It’ll be just like that!

In each recording you will hear me speak to a variety of people, for example - a friend, an Italian teacher....and even my parents! You will listen to two people talking about general, day-to-day topics. Each person originates from a different Italian region. They all have different accents and different ways of speaking.

When recording, I didn't provide the participants with a script or any guideline at all. The conversations are spontaneous and flow naturally. I have edited as little as possible, meaning that you’ll be able to hear all the ehm’s and ah’s… pauses, breaks and hesitations that you would expect of any natural conversation. I tried to keep each conversation as close to a “real life conversation” as possible to provide my listeners with a recorded listening tool that provides real world linguistic experience.

What you will find included:

• 7 audio recordings of 7 different conversations

• 7 transcripts of each conversation

• 7 language and cultural notes explaining the main grammar and vocabulary aspects in each episode. I have added links to some of these. Click on the links to watch the videos or read more information about that specific feature.

• 1 “Reflection” document where you can take notes of new vocabulary and similarities between the episodes (vocabulary, grammar and pronunciation aspects

• Instructions so that you can get the most out of the program

You should allow about 1 hour - 1 hour and a half for each recording.

How to use the product:

1. Listen to the episode once, without looking at the transcript

2. Listen to the episode again, while following the transcript

3. Highlight the words and expressions you are not familiar with

4. Look at the language and cultural notes at the bottom of the transcript

5. If you are not sure about the meaning of some words, use https://www.wordreference.com/

6. Write in the reflection page the words you highlighted on step 3

7. Complete the activity on the reflection document

8. Listen to the episode again without looking at the transcript

   
   

Buon ascolto!