Nobody can survive professionally as having in knowledge nothing but your mother-tongue, what merit is there in speaking a language you would speak anyway?

There is no investment of time, money and hard work. While millions of people already speak more than one language, why would a company need to hire you when the other guy’s resume says he dominates one or two more languages than you?

The truth is we are living in different times, we need to do business all over the world, that is what company’s thrive for, having employees that can help the company communicate with all the important countries in the world.

There is no secret, no computer chip that will automatically enable you to communicate in a certain language, like all other things in life it takes effort, perseverance and time but it doesn’t have to be a strenuous endeavor, it can be a fun process as you motivate yourself when the words start to spontaneously blurt out of you mouth, or when you start reading articles in that language, or start understanding songs and movies. And before you know it you’re in the market for big multinational companies. Here are some tips that will help you:

1 – To start off you may need to attend an Italian school, it can be dangerous to study on your own; you need someone to put you on the track by correcting your pronunciation and teaching you all the basic grammar and creating some short dialogues so you can begin to interact with someone. Interaction is the key.

2 – Find some websites on the internet that offer free tutorials followed by activities, these can be found at any search engine, just make searches like e.g.: “Italian language on-line lessons and activities”, or “study Italian on-line”, or whatever search you can come up with.

3 – Get some songs or buy some CDs of artists of countries that speak Italian, after a while you will be singing along, which is helpful to acquire the correct pronunciation and will also help you memorize some structures and sentences. After that you can get the lyrics on the internet and study them, with a dictionary look for any words you don’t know.

4 – Watch movies in Italian. It’s acceptable to use subtitles as long as they are also in Italian. You can keep rewinding a few parts of the movie and repeating what the actor is saying, until you pronounce those sentences correctly.

5 – Read articles off the internet. Remember to grab a dictionary, this is a great tool to be updated on what’s going on in the world, and learning a bunch of new words, at this point you should have an Italian to Italian dictionary, it is not considered good to be translating the language unless when you are really beginning to study it.

6 – Join an on-line Italian community, or add Italians to your msn or whatever you use and communicate with them, this can be very helpful once you are interacting with people who have Italian as their mother-tongue.

7 – Go to Italy. Nothing else can be as a fulfilling experience in a language-learning process than being completely immersed in the language and culture. This may not be the cheapest of the steps but it is where you will make the most progress and consolidate yourself as an Italian language speaker. You should contact an Italian language school, you can choose to have the language lessons in morning and in the afternoon you can visit coffee shops read the newspaper meet and talk to some very interesting people (the Italians are famous for being very sociable), and you will surely have a lot to do on the weekends and at night.

Florence is an ideal destination, it has been chosen many times as the best place in the world to visit, is a rewarding experience not only professionally because you will receive a certificate but also personally for all the wonderful historical places you’ll be visiting.

The trip is really not as expensive as you may think, but it does require some planning, when you start the steps I have suggested (which should be today), you can already check out some flight tickets, schools prices, you can contact the Accademia Europea di Firenze and we can help you find a nice place for you to stay, once you have established a budget you can start putting away some money every month. Don’t hesitate to call us, we are real people and would love to help you make your stay here as enjoyable as possible.

After these steps have been concluded you are in game for a healthy career and are set to start another language in the future if you’d like.

David Pruitt
Accademia Europea di Firenze is an Italian language, Music, Art and Culture School located in the very heart of Florence. http://www.italianlanguageflorence.com/