Archives for September 2015

If you want to speak and understand Italian better, you should give some thought to selecting the approach that will be best-suited to your style of learning and circumstances.

You might, for instance, get on very well ‘teaching yourself’ Italian using materials available on the Internet. If that sounds like you, take a look at OnlineItalianClub.com, which has thousands of pages of grammar and practise exercises.

But perhaps you’d prefer something more structured? Maybe you’d appreciate the chance to learn Italian in Italy? Or need to study online with lessons from an Italian native-speaker teacher?

No matter what your situation, Madrelingua Italian School offers a variety of Italian courses so you can be sure you’ll find something to suit you. Choose between standard or more intensive courses, courses personalized to your specific needs, evening classes in Bologna, or online lessons from your home or office.

Courses in Bologna, Italy

Bologna is the ideal place to study Italian! It’s small enough to get around on foot, but has all the facilities of a city, including an international airport and Europe’s oldest university.

Taking an Italian course at our school is an excellent way to boost your Italian. It’s also totally flexible, as courses can be of any length, the minimum period being just one week.

Most students choose our standard 20-hour-a-week option, which means studying from nine-thirty to one-thirty each morning from Monday to Friday. Afternoons can be spent studying in the school with a tutor, participating in activities organized as part of our social program, or just exploring the city.

A typical student completes a level in four to five weeks. If you’re able to stay away for longer, you could even reach an advanced level. Longer courses bring greater fluency and confidence with Italian, but also offer excellent value for money since each subsequent week costs less!

Find out more about the 20-hour-a-week Italian course

Intensive Italian courses

For more experienced language learners, or for those who wish to cram as many lessons as possible into each day, we offer the 30-hour-a-week ‘intensive course’.

You study with the morning students, but get an extra two hours of lessons each afternoon. You should bear in mind that learning a language can be tiring… this is not an option to be chosen lightly!

More on intensive Italian courses

Courses personalized to your needs

If you have a specific objective, you may prefer individual or semi-individual Italian lessons. Choose how many hours you would like to study, and when. There’s no minimum, but there are discounts for greater numbers of hours.

Your teacher will personalize lessons based on your needs. You might, for example, want to speak as much as possible, or to work on preparing for an exam or a job in which you’ll need to speak or write in Italian.

Details of individual Italian lessons

Evening classes at Madrelingua

For students who are already in Bologna for study, work or family reasons, we offer Italian evening classes during the academic year, from October to December and then again from January to June.

There are two lessons a week, each of three hours duration. So a three-week evening course module is approximately equivalent to one week of our 20-hour-a-week ‘morning’ course.

We’d expect you to be able to improve your Italian by about a level in each of the two ‘terms’.

Dates and times of Italian evening classes

Online lessons from your home or office

Wherever you are in the world, there’s always the option to study online with one of our staff of professional Italian teachers.

For online teaching we use Skype video calling software, which is free to download and easy to use.

All you need is a decent broadband Internet connection and a PC or tablet and you could be taking lessons from your home or office at a time to suit you.

As for our individual courses, online lesson content is personalized according to your needs and preferences.

Book online Italian lessons

More Articles About Learning Italian | FAQ

It’s that time of year again.

August’s sticky weather and deserted streets are gone. Now the sidewalks are crowded, and with the milder September climate there’s barely a place to be found at the tables outside bars and restaurants.

Besides being a popular tourist destination, Bologna is home to Europe’s oldest university. With its traditions and vibrant social life, it’s a magnet both for Italian students and for young people from all over the world.

The European Union’s Erasmus program encourages the continent’s youth to spend time in another member state as an exchange student. Needless to say, Italy is one of the most popular choices, and Bologna one of Italy’s premier destinations. So in September young people arrive here in droves, though often without knowing a word of Italian!

Bologna is also ‘capoluogo’ of the Emilia-Romagna region, and as such attracts many a foreign specialist to work in its companies and factories. They bring with them their expertise and skills, but are often only able to communicate with fellow workers in English, which not all Italians know well…

Hence the timing of our evening Italian classes! They’re aimed specifically at students and workers, and run at up to five different levels, two evenings a week, between the end of September and Christmas (and then again from January until the beginning of the summer.)

Italian evening classes are the ideal solution for anyone who finds themselves in Bologna and needs to brush up on their foreign language skills, while leaving the days free for work or for lessons at the university.

The classes are organized in three week modules. That’s two lessons of three hours each week, eighteen hours in total, that being equivalent to approximately a week of studying full-time.

With four modules you could improve an entire level, and over an academic year complete two, or even three levels (similar to studying four, eight or twelve weeks full-time.)

Italian evening classes are also a great way to meet people, especially when you first arrive and don’t know anyone. As Italian is the ‘lingua franca’ of our classes, you’ll get used to using it to communicate.

And who knows? Maybe you’ll stay in touch with the friends you make in your Italian class, and so continue practising the language with them long after your course is over!

Follow this link to find out more about Italian evening classes in Bologna.

Or, if you’re not able to work or study here, visit our Italian courses page to find out about studying Italian full-time or taking online Italian lessons from your home or office.

Got a question? Here’s how to contact us.

• Tel. 00 39 051 267 822
• E-mail: info@madrelinguaitalian.com
• Address: via San Giorgio, 6 – 40121 Bologna (BO), Italy