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learn italian in Italy: some considerations on your choice
Want to learn Italian in Italy and study in Florence? Want to know what does it really mean to study on a one-to-one basis, in a small or a bigger group class? Some points that you should take into consideration in order to decide which is the most appropriate course type for you.
Prospective students often hesitate to enroll in one-to-one or private language courses for two reasons. The first is that they think a one-to-one course might be boring and participating with a group will be more fun.
Second, planing to l learn italian in Italy, they often choose a regular size group course, being less expensive, as they think that being in a class with 8-12 students, the differences of learning are very little respectively to a small group or a one-to-one class.
Let’s start from the fear that a one-to-one course might be boring.
Programs tailored to your needs and interests should actually not be boring
We provide quality instruction to allow you to learn italian in Italy without wasting your time, and specifically, we don’t want to bore you. Boredom would turn into a failure for you, a defeat for us and a frustration for the teachers.
We don’t promise to entertain you – our primary goal is teaching you the Italian language – but we do try to make the instruction interesting and we promise to make the most of your class time without making you feel overwhelmed by the time spent learning.
The one-to-one Italian courses are structured in a way that the programs interchanges the studies of grammar, syntax, vocabulary and phonetics by doing exercises of different types, role plays, writing, etc. The topics for conversations as well as written exercises are selected according to the interest of the students, who choose to learn italian in Italy.
And now a few words about the price.
how much does learn italian in Italy really cost ?
Price should be regarded in the context of likely linguistic achievement, or in other words, how much time (and therefore money) do you need to achieve, let’s say, an intermediate or an advanced level? How much time should you plan to stay in Italy to achieve your goals? The fact is, that you can study a language either in a one-to-one course or in a group.
The group can be bigger or smaller, but when you share your time with about 10 or even more other students, your active participation in class is only a small fraction of the entire lesson and you may be disappointed with the results. In fact, in the process of language learning, the active practice under the tuition of an experienced teacher makes the main difference. Of course, the grammar and structures need to be studied, but actually learning a language is a very practical matter.
Another thing to consider when you are planing to learn italian in Italy is that a group class usually is composed of students with various mother-tongues (such as French, German, Spanish, Russian, Portuguese, English or Japanese) which can be interesting, and may encourage you to speak Italian, but it also slows down the speed of your learning: The effects of these linguistic differences and the fact that each student learns at a different pace could lead to confusion or distraction, depending on the composition of your group.
This is why in a one-to-one Italian course, you can learn 3 to 4 times faster and more thoroughly, because the teachers are devoting their time to you alone. The course is tailored to your needs and your pace of learning, slowing down when you are tired, speeding up when you are brilliant.
In a small group course, the results achieved take about half the time than in a class with more students, this thanks to the fact that the percentage of active participation of every students is still quite high. This means that in a group the speed of learning, unfortunately, decreases with every more participants.
Less time learning translates into less time living in a foreign country, in this case Italy, and possibly an overall reduction of costs involved when studying abroad.
In order to know how much time you should plan to learn italian in Italy and to reach a certain level of knowledge by taking a one-to-one, small group or regular size group course, click here >>>
Conclusion
One last thing, if the leading companies of the world choose this approach when they want their employees to learn Italian in Italy, we assume they have reached the conclusion that time saved and results achieved are worth the increased tuition fee.
Our opinion is that for most students an individualized course is the best value for the cost.
1 hour = 60 minutes
At our school each lesson hour lasts 60 minutes. In many other schools the lesson hour lasts 45 or 50 minutes and the prices of their courses, apparently lower, are actually higher of 25% (or 20%) of those written on their brochure.