Olly Richards - Short Stories in Italian for Beginners

Olly Richards, author of the Teach Yourself Foreign Language Graded Readers series, speaks eight languages and is the man behind the popular language-learning blog: I Will Teach You a Language.

Olly started learning his first foreign language at age 19, when he bought a one-way ticket to Paris. With no exposure to languages growing up, and no special talent to speak of, Olly had to figure out how to learn a foreign language from scratch.

Fifteen years later, Olly holds a masters in TESOL from Aston University as well as Cambridge CELTA and Delta. He has also studied ten languages and become an expert in language learning techniques. He collaborates with organizations such as The Open University and the European Commission, and is a regular speaker at international language events and in-person workshops.

Olly started the I Will Teach You a Language blog in 2013 to document his latest language learning experiments. His useful language learning tips have transformed the blog into one of the most popular language learning resources on the web. Olly has always advocated that reading is one of the best ways to improve your language skills and he has now applied his expertise to create the Teach Yourself Foreign Language Graded Readers series. He hopes that Short Stories in Italian for Beginners will help you in your language studies!

For more information about Olly and his blog, go to www.iwillteachyoualanguage.com.

For more information about other readers in this series, go to readers.teachyourself.com.

Reading in a foreign language is one of the most effective ways for you to improve language skills and expand vocabulary. However, it can sometimes be difficult to find engaging reading materials at an appropriate level that provide a feeling of achievement and a sense of progress. Most books and articles written for native speakers can be too long and difficult to understand or may have very high-level vocabulary so you feel overwhelmed and give up. If these problems sound familiar, then this book is for you!

Short Stories in Italian for Beginners is a collection of eight unconventional and entertaining short stories that are designed to help high-beginner to low-intermediate level Italian learners improve their language skills. These short stories create a supportive reading environment by including:

Also, the passato remoto (simple past) can be a source of frustration for new Italian learners, as it is a difficult verb form found mostly in literary Italian. This book instead chooses to use the passato prossimo along with other common narrative forms as appropriate. This editorial decision not only removes a barrier to reading enjoyably in Italian, but also helps you perfect verb forms that will be immediately useful in your speaking.

So perhaps you are new to Italian and looking for an entertaining way to learn, or maybe you have been learning for a while and simply want to enjoy reading and expand your vocabulary, either way, this book is the biggest step forward you will take in your studies this year. Short Stories in Italian for Beginners will give you all the support you need, so sit back, relax, and let your imagination run wild as you are transported to a magical world of adventure, mystery and intrigue in Italian!

Common European Framework of Reference (CEFR) level A2-B1

Reading is a complex skill. In our first languages, we employ a variety of micro-skills to help us read. For example, we might skim a particular passage in order to understand the general idea, or gist. Or we might scan through multiple pages of a train timetable looking for a particular time or place. While these micro-skills are second nature when reading in our first languages, when it comes to reading in a foreign language, research suggests that we often abandon most of these reading skills. In a foreign language we usually start at the beginning of a text and try to understand every single word. Inevitably, we come across unknown or difficult words and quickly get frustrated with our lack of understanding.

One of the main benefits of reading in a foreign language is that you gain exposure to large amounts of words and expressions used naturally. This kind of reading for pleasure in order to learn a language is generally known as extensive reading. It is very different from reading a textbook in which dialogues or texts are meant to be read in detail with the aim of understanding every word. That kind of reading to reach specific learning aims or do tasks is referred to as intensive reading. To put it another way, the intensive reading in textbooks usually helps you with grammar rules and specific vocabulary, whereas reading stories extensively helps show you natural language in use.

While you may have started your language learning journey using only textbooks, Short Stories in Italian for Beginners will now provide you with opportunities to learn more about natural Italian language in use. Here are a few suggestions to keep in mind when reading the stories in this book in order to learn the most from them: