Learning a new language is not easy. Anyone who has tried can tell you that. And I would bet that the number one stumbling block for new language learners is frustration.
When things don’t make sense immediately or you keep trying to achieve a specific objective and just can’t seem to do so, it’s easy for frustration to mount. And frustration can be dangerous because it leads to discouragement and possible abandonment of a goal you really value.
As someone who has studied Italian for about 8 or 9 years now, I’m no stranger to frustration when it comes to learning Italian. I can think of two specific examples that you may be able to relate to, and I’d like to share them here, as well as how I was able to overcome them and move forward with my Italian learning. Both of these examples occurred when I had a decent, but not great, proficiency with Italian, which I think shows that frustration can occur not just for beginners but with experienced language learners as well.
When I was in Verona for a six-week study abroad program, I wanted to take in as much of the experience as I could, and that included watching a national-level soccer tournament that was being shown over the course of two weeks while I was there. I have played soccer most of my life, and I love watching it as well.
I especially wanted to test my listening comprehension skills by listening to the announcers call the games. I was surprised to find that I could barely understand 10% of what the announcers were saying. I just couldn’t make out the words, let alone follow the conversation between the announcers. I couldn’t figure out why I was having so much trouble understanding the announcers. When I was walking around the streets of Verona, I was able to understand a fair amount of the conversations around me. But I couldn’t follow what was being said during the games, and I started to get really frustrated.
However, I kept watching the soccer games, if only because I enjoy watching soccer. And I as started to become more familiar with the names of the players, and I realized that at least 50% of what the announcers were saying were players’ names! Think about it: “Materazzi passes the ball to Figo, who passes it to Del Piero, who has it stolen by Gattuso…” etc. If you don’t know the players’ names and you try to make sense of the sounds you’re hearing as regular Italian words, it’s no surprise that you’ll feel lost.
After I realized this, I went from understanding 10% of what the announcers were saying to about 80 to 90%. My frustration disappeared, but I had to stick with it and keep watching the games to arrive at a breakthrough that allowed my understanding of the soccer broadcasts to take a big leap forward.
The second example has to do with Florence. Florence is an amazing city, one that I have been to many times, but many of my early visits were filled with frustration. The first three or four times I went to Florence, I tried to speak Italian in every bar, cafe, restaurant, shop, and hotel that I went to, but I was always responded to in English.
I got frustrated really quickly. Why won’t you stupid Florentines respond to me in Italian?! You must get countless American tourists speaking to you in English, and here I am making the effort to speak to you in Italian, and I get nothing in return! Frustration only scratches the surface, as I started to really dislike the city of Florence for this reason.
After these discouraging initial experiences, I went back to Florence six months into my nine-month stay in Milan. After having lived in Italy for six months, my pronunciation, intonation, and ability to speak natural-sounding Italian had improved dramatically.
As I came back to Florence and continued my so-far-fruitless attempt to have an Italian conversation in the tourist-filled city, I fully expected for the past trend to continue and for my Italian to be responded to in English. To my surprise, this time nearly all of the Florentines I spoke to responded to me in Italian.
I realized that in my earlier trips to Florence, even though I had a decent command of the Italian language and could understand a lot of what was being said, my pronunciation still wasn’t very good. Basically, even though I was speaking Italian, I still sounded like an American tourist, and that is what the Italian people I spoke to were responded to.
Think about your own native language: we instantly pick up on when someone is speaking with an accent, when they pronounce words and use intonations that don’t sound natural to us. Well, the same holds true when you’re learning a foreign language. In fact, this is probably one of the biggest hurdles you will have to overcome as you become more proficient: how to sound more natural in the target language, so that native speakers may not instantly realize that you are not a native speaker. This is difficult to do and takes a lot of time and practice, but when you get past this potential stumbling block, the effect is amazing and really encouraging.
So those are two examples of frustration I experienced as I tried to expand my Italian-speaking abilities, and I hope my illustrations of how I overcame them were illuminating in some way.
Here are some general tips I would recommend when you experience frustration in learning a new language:
- Perseverance. You’re not going to understand everything immediately, and sometimes it just takes time to sink in. This can be one of the most frustrating times, but if you stick with it and don’t give up, you’ll often be surprised and feel a lot of encouragement when a breakthrough finally occurs.
- Reach out and ask someone. As I think my examples show, I have trouble following this tip. I tried to figure out what was blocking me and causing me frustration on my own, but this requires a lot of trial and error and can prolong the frustration. If you can find a native speaker or someone who has found success in what you are trying to do, try asking them about the thing that is causing you frustration.
- Discouragement limits you and what you are capable of. I think virtually everyone is capable is understanding virtually anything or any subject, at least at some level. The human brain is an amazing device. But many people, at the first sign of trouble, give up, and they never grow because of this. Determination and confidence can be difficult to develop, but if you truly value the goal you are pursuing, the struggle is worth it. It’s much better on the other side. Believe me.
album. Here is the video:
and they have been my favorite Italian band ever since. Before this album, they released 
in 2007 and this is a good album as well. If you like alternative rock, you should definitely check them out!
, 
) and the fantastical films of Federico Fellini (
, 
, 8 1/2). These films are important in their own right. However, Italy has changed tremendously over the past few decades, and it is modern Italy that truly interests me. Many of the films in this guide reflect a new Italy, and you can learn a lot about modern Italian culture from watching them. Some of these films reflect the Italy of earlier times, and you can form a picture from them of what modern Italy has grown out of.
