Finally, the clouds have cleared and the greyness and humidity of autumn has gone.

The sky is a bright blue today, and the sun is hot.

So, I had no excuse not to cycle to work this morning, which brought back memories of the London commute, before we moved to Italy.

Shudders. Truly, on a day like today, I wouldn’t live anywhere else but Bologna.

Which kind of put me in the mood to write about the attractions of our city and why it’s such a great place to learn Italian.

I even thought of popping out to the piazza and taking a few photos for you. [Read more…]

Have you seen our new website? It’s now connected to Twitter too!

www.madrelinguaitalian.com

Congratulazioni!

“Congratulazioni” to the 21 students who passed a CILS Italian language exam at Madrelingua this summer!

Liudmill and Samantha passed the A2 exam.

Guillermo got his B1.

Yuki, Palma Boglarka, Charlotte, Guilherme, Fernando, Gonzalo, Carlos Javier, Laura, Jorge, Ana, Fernando, Maria Isabela and Hye Kyoung all receive B2 CILS certificates.

At C1, Adel, Viktoria and Sophia were successful!

And finally there were two passes at the highest, C2, level: Luciene and Marli Joanina.

Well done to all of you!

CILS December 2012

For students interested in the next session of CILS exams in Bologna, there are still a few days left in which you can enroll.

Check out our CILS page for details of the course + exam offer: you could save the price of an A1 or A2 exam, or get €40 off a higher level exam, if you sign up for a course at the same time.

CILS Practice Materials

Check out these free practice materials on OnlineItalianClub.com:

B1 Level

http://onlineitalianclub.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/09/B1-tipo1.pdf

http://onlineitalianclub.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/B1-tipo-2.pdf

http://onlineitalianclub.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/B1-tipo-4-Giulia.pdf

B2 Level

http://onlineitalianclub.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/09/B2-tipo1.pdf

http://onlineitalianclub.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/B2-tipo-2.pdf

http://onlineitalianclub.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/B2-tipo-4-Giulia.pdf

C1 Level

http://onlineitalianclub.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/09/C1-tipo1.pdf

http://onlineitalianclub.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/C1-tipo-2.pdf

http://onlineitalianclub.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/C1-tipo-4.pdf

C2 Level

http://onlineitalianclub.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/09/C2-tipo1.pdf

http://onlineitalianclub.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/C2-tipo-2.pdf

http://onlineitalianclub.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/C2-tipo-4.pdf

CILS forum

Last, but not least, don’t forget the CILS forum on OnlineItalianClub.com. The place to ask your questions about the exam, the free  materials, or any problems you are having with your preparation!

Out with the old…

Way back in 2006 we created the first Madrelingua Italian School website by copying and adapting the code from the English school site which we’d paid a fortune for the year before. The result was a visual disaster, an awful mix of orange and green!

Nevertheless, students used to tell us that they chose our school because they liked the site – perhaps it was the fact that it looked so hopeless!

Since then, we’ve kept working on it, always trying to make it better, if we could. One year, a young designer from the U.S. doing an internship at our school managed to give the site a wonderful new look, without spending any money (thanks, Karen).

Other interns helped us translate the content into 15 other languages, including Thai and Chinese! Still others took photos and wrote exercises.

And I’ve personally spent many months of my life cutting and pasting bits of HTML from one page to another in an effort to make sure that the site was always updated and smart.

Over time, the site attracted a good level of traffic, and moved up the search-engine ratings so we were able to compete with other Italian schools.

But now, 6 years on from that initial experiment,  www.madrelinguaitaliano.com is looking dated. What’s more, the world has changed: social networks, sharing, content created by the user, and Google’s latest changes to its ranking system, have all contributed to making the old site obsolete.

and in with the new!

Presenting….  www.madrelinguaitalian.com ! An almost identical domain, which allowed us to create a new, parallel site (you’re on the new one now!) from scratch, while leaving the old one in place until the day when we’ll finally be ready to scrap it.

Most of our users read English, so we’ve started with that language, and will gradually add others when time and resources permit.

A wonderful content management system allows us to achieve a nice visual effect with our limited resources, and has liberated me from the grunt work of coding hundreds of pages by hand. Stefi and the teachers  will also be able to work on the site themselves when they need to, without needing technical skills.

So, what do you think?

Well, have a look around.. click a few links, go on! Well? What do you think? Better the new or the old? Go on, you can say what you REALLY think (gently, though).

Seriously, we’d love to get your feedback on the new site. Leave a comment to let us know if you like it or not, and why.