Welcome to A spasso con l’italiano – a stroll with Italian! This is our newest blog for practicing your writing skills. Several times each month we will post a short piece and ask you to respond with your comments and opinions. We may write a short commentary on Italian politics, review a book or a movie, or perhaps we’ll talk about our favorite wines and recipes or simply fare quattro chiacchiere! We will then invite you to respond in Italian as best you can. Moderators will then correct your responses as needed, providing feedback as needed.
Some writing tips:
- Try to use words that you know and avoiding using the dictionary if possible. This helps you avoid writing English in Italian.
- As your Italian improves, try making your sentences longer by making use of conjunctions, relative pronouns, idiomatic expressions and the like. English is a succinct language. Italian is a lyrical one.
- Try to keep your responses between 200 and 300 words whenever possible (longer is fine, it just might take a bit longer to correct it). This allows us to correct the responses quickly.
- Only responses in Italian will be accepted. Comments left in English will not be published and will be deleted.
- Please refrain from correcting the responses of others. This will be the task of the moderators, otherwise troppi cuochi guastano la cucina (too many cooks in the kitchen spoil the broth).
- And finally, learn and have fun with your Italian!
