Learn Italian with Lucrezia

Language learning is all about being engaged with the content you’re studying. The best thing about language learning as an adult is that you can direct your own studies. If you don’t like writing, type instead. If you love music, listen to music.

Today I would like to tell you about one way I direct my own learning.
Let me introduce you to my Italian YouTube idol! 

I really adore Lucrezia Oddone, a Roman girl who blogs and makes videos for Italian learners. While she was learning Norwegian, she found that there weren’t many resources online that she could use to support her language learning. Inspired by this, Lucrezia began making a blog to provide the same service to Italian learners. She quickly realised that she needed video content to support her posts.Thus, her Learn Italian with Lucrezia YouTube channel was born!

Here are some take-home points about her blog and channel.

Blog: https://learnitalianwithlucrezia.org/

Lucrezia’s blog is a great for anyone who doesn’t want to pay money for a textbook. Her blog has a mix of book and movie suggestions, grammar lessons and specific themes or topics. Lesson 1 begins with an introduction to Italy.
My suggestion is to start with lesson 1 and click ‘next post’ until the next lesson comes up or you find a post title that interests you. You could systematically go through her posts chronologically.
Another suggestion is to use the search function on the right to search specifically for what you would like to learn.

YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/user/lucreziaoddone

This is where the magic happens! Lucrezia has organised her videos into playlists. She offers a variety of videos also at different ability levels with and without subtitles. I really enjoy the diversity of videos and appreciate that she always begins with a introduction to the learning intent. My recommendation is to download her videos to put on your phone/iPod. Then watch or listen to it at least 50 times or more while you’re on the bus, doing chores or on a lunch break. This article by Charles Scalfani introduces this repetition method of language learning. To be honest, this is something I need to begin doing seriously.

Instagram: lucreziaoddone

Actually, wait, this is my favourite part of Learn Italian with Lucrezia. Lucrezia posts photos every day and makes daily instagram videos. Every morning on my walk, the first thing I do is check out what she’s been up to!
Test out your Italian by commenting on her photos and answering her questions.

Hold up, my actual actual favourite part was meeting her!

A very exciting and happy day for me on my second trip to Italy. Unfortunately, I was so nervous I didn’t speak any Italian! Che peccato!

Andrea xo