There are many benefits to learning a second language, and the same goes with learning to speak Italian. Here are a few benefits to learning to speak Italian that may encourage you to start studying it on your own or through other means:

• Italian is part of your heritage.
• You are interested in an Italian who you want to impress by speaking their language.
• You want a job or promotion that would require you to speak Italian.
• You want to move to Italy.
• You love romantic languages.
• You already know several other languages and want to learn a new one.
• You love Italian food.
• You love a challenge.

There are a ton of benefits to speaking Italian. Once you’ve decided to take the plunge, you need to put in the time and study.

What’s the Best Way to Learn to Speak Italian Fluently?

There are many different ways to go about learning a language. You can study on your own, take a class at a college, or move to Italy for an Immersion program. An Italy immersion program taking intensive language courses will be the fastest and most efficient way, but it’s not something you can easily work into your life.

Taking an Italian language course at a college or community center is helpful, but ultimately, you need to be committed to learning fluently. Many people prefer working at their own pace and designing a more efficient course.

I highly recommend reading How To Learn Any Language: Quickly, Easily, Inexpensively, Enjoyably and on Your Own. It gives you step by step instructions on how to learn any language, including Italian. By following the instructions carefully and putting in serious effort and studying, you can learn how to speak Italian. It will involve studying grammar books, reading and translating real Italian text such as newspaper articles, learning phrases, practicing pronunciation and comprehension through listening, etc.

One of my favorite parts of the book is when Barry Farber says that if you mastered all the information in just one textbook or language learning tool, you will know a lot of the language. Even if you took a simple beginner Italian textbook and Italian audio program and mastered every word and grammar point and were able to form sentences with them easily with practice, you’d speak Italian so much better than most students that have gone through Italian language courses in school.

To speak Italian, fluently or conversationally, you have to study and put your all into it. With consistent work, results will come that you can use in your life.

Start with a Textbook

Get a beginners textbook that has grammar rules, vocabulary, and exercises. It doesn’t have to be especially fancy. Just work through it slowly. Don’t treat it as you did school books. Take each lesson and master it. Memorize the vocabulary perfectly and completely understand the grammar. Do all the exercises. Practice beyond the exercises, as well. Write your own sentences and practice pronouncing them.

Learn Phrases

Get a phrasebook and start memorizing the phrases. At first you might not understand the grammar, but you will know how to say common phrases. As you understand more grammar and keep learning more phrases, you will have better comprehension all while learning new vocabulary.

You can get a very basic phrasebook or one with a wide variety of phrases. Usually they will have something to do with travel. Start with the basic greetings and work your way through. Concentrate on pronunciation and memorization. Eventually, you will understand the grammar behind the more complicated phrases.

Read and Translate

Reading Spanish is a great immersion techniques. Reach children’s books, articles, and anything you can get in Spanish. Translate as you go and write down any words you don’t know to add to your vocabulary lists. This will help with comprehension and vocabulary.

Immerse your Ears

Listening to the language will help you improve listening comprehension and your own pronunciation. Don’t just have the Spanish channel on while you do other things, sit down, watch, and listen. Try to understand what they are saying by what you see such as the surroundings and the speakers mannerisms. Listen to Spanish music and language software and CDs to help you.

Practice Frequently

Study and practice regularly. Instead of spending 3 hours every Saturday studying, spend 20 minutes everyday. You’d spend less time overall, but you wouldn’t forget as much studying each day rather than going 6 days without looking at Spanish. Also, practice speaking on a regular basis. Even if it just means starting with very simple phrases. Eventually, you will be able to make up conversations in your head. Also, practicing speaking is important to master pronunciation and speak fluidly and quickly.

Learning a second language takes a lot of work. It also takes a lot of work to maintain a second language when you’re an adult. However, your first language isn’t going anywhere because you learned it when you were a child. As a young child, your mind absorbs a ton of information and retains it very well. Children learn language in a very unique way and are able to retain it for a lifetime. Eventually, as we get older, we lose this ability.

Helping your child learn two languages as they grow up is giving them a great advantage. The Bilingual Edge: Why, When, and How to Teach Your Child a Second Language is a great book that will tell you all about the advantages of being bilingual and why teaching your child a second language is important. It will also go into detail about how learning two or more languages as a child will not hinder their ability to learn their first language well, and how they will be smarter overall by learning more than one.

Teaching Spanish for kids is a great second language to introduce to them. It’s not an especially difficult language, especially if English is their first language. The earlier you start them with it, the better.

One of the best ways to introduce Spanish for kids and to help teach them the language is to speak it to them. Especially as babies and toddlers, hearing the language will put many words into their vocabulary and will help them to comprehend the language. If you don’t speak Spanish, introduce it in other ways.

Get a Spanish-speaking babysitter. This is actually a great idea. If you speak English with them and the babysitter speaks Spanish, the child will be less likely to be confused. They can speak English with you and Spanish with her. Spanish kids movies and television is also helpful.

Here are some great Spanish for Kids programs. They are both educational and fun for them to use. Be consistent with any program you use. Even if they just spend 30 minutes per day studying the language and being exposed to it, they will retain more with regular use than long sporadic sessions.

If you want to learn to speak Italian, you need to be prepared to put in some study time, even if you just want to learn some conversational Italian for a trip to Italy. Of course, conversational Italian will take much less time and work than it would to reach fluency. One book I strongly recommend reading, especially if you want to read fluency, is How To Learn Any Language: Quickly, Easily, Inexpensively, Enjoyably and on Your Own. It is a great book that takes you step by step on how to learn any language you want. Follow the program, study hard, and stick with it, and you will be speaking much more quickly than in a traditional classroom setting.

Italian is one of the romance languages. If English is your first language, learning Italian will be much less difficult than languages such as as Chinese or Russian. If you speak Spanish or learned any Spanish in high school, you will notice a lot of similarities.

Getting Started

Start by getting your tools to study. You should have a basic introduction book, preferably with grammar and some vocabulary. Work your way through the book mastering each vocabulary word and grammar point as you go along.  Get a notebook and practice writing your own sentences, even other than the exercises they may give you. Don’t just go through the lessons, master them. Here are several great beginner books for Italian.

You should also get something with audio instruction if possible. There are many audio programs, software and CD or MP3, that are very expensive, such as Pimsleur or Rosetta Stone. Neither are good enough to reach fluency alone, but they are great accompaniments. There are many less expensive options as well.

Be sure to have the best dictionary you can get as well as a phrasebook. A phrasebook is especially helpful for those who want to learn enough for a trip to Italy. Here are my top recommendations.

Jump into the Language

The best way to immerse yourself in a language is to live among those who speak it regularly. If you can’t do that, immerse yourself on your won. Watch Italian movies, listen to Italian music, read and translate Italian newspapers and books, write in Italian, and speak it, even if you’re just babbling to yourself. The more you expose yourself to the language, the better. If you are fortunate enough to have the opportunity to live abroad for any amount of time in Italy, take advantage of it and speak and interact in the language.

There are many possible reasons why you would need to learn a new language.

- You need to learn some Japanese for a business trip to Japan.

- You’ve always wanted to take your high school Spanish to the next level.

- Or, you’ve always been fascinated with foreign languages and you want to speak as many as you can.

Learning a new language is expected of you in high school.  Most schools have a requirement of taking at least two years of a language.  When you took Spanish, French, or another language in high school, you may have enjoyed yourself, or you hated it.  Either way, now you have come across foreign languages again and are required to learn.

If you need to learn a language for your job or for a business trip, it may not mean you are looking forward to it.  Don’t let this attitude take away from an incredible experience.  Learning a language and speaking a language is a great skill that you should enjoy developing.

Even if you don’t plan on learning a language to fluency, but you just want to learn a language conversationally, you can still get a lot out of it.  Don’t feel ashamed to only be learning conversation french, spanish, or another language.  When you do it this way, you can actually learn many more languages.

Whatever your reason for learning a foreign language is, you’ve come to the right place. Here you will find:

- Tips and techniques for learning a foreign language

- A closer look at some common second languages

- Reviews of books and products used to learn foreign languages

How to Learn a Language – It’s never impossible to learn a language, find out how!

Spanish – Why you should learn spanish and more.

French – Basics of learning french and beyond.

Product Reviews – Reviews for books, software, and audio products that may help you on your language learning journey.

Beyond Learning… – Take a step back from studying…

Don’t hesitate to learn everything you can.  Learning a new language means learning how to study and what to study.  Don’t give up.  Give it time and you’ll be speaking before you know it!

Once you learn how to learn a foreign language, all you have to do is put in the time and effort.  This will mean immersing yourself in the language and studying and learning every chance you get.  The more you study, learn, speak, listen, read, write, etc. the more you will learn and the more quickly you will learn.