Learning Italian for travel — the right approach for beginners
We sometimes assume that everyone who wants to start learning Italian is the same — that they all start from zero and can all be taught in the same way. As an online Italian tutor, I disagree. Teenagers and university students attending Italian classes have different goals, different schedules and different needs compared to adults who are learning Italian specifically for travel. The teaching approach needs to reflect that.
I worked for several years at a traditional Italian language school where beginner classes were made up of teenagers who wanted to study in Italy, young professionals who needed Italian for work, and adults who wanted to learn Italian to travel and enjoy their holidays in Italy. Working this way was genuinely difficult — even though the students were almost always motivated and positive. It was difficult because standard Italian textbooks are written primarily for young people studying in a classroom setting. And because the goals of the people in my class, even though they were all beginners, were very different from each other.
I remember one class with Sylwia, a brilliant young woman who wanted to speak with her Italian boyfriend’s family. There was a retired couple, Grzegorz and Izabela, who wanted to learn Italian to travel. And there was Zosia, in her final year of secondary school, who wanted to enrol at a university in Italy after the summer. They were all warm, intelligent people and I got along well with all of them — but at the end of the course, nobody was truly satisfied. My boss, though, didn’t particularly care. They were beginners, so they belonged together.
Today I work as an independent online Italian teacher, and I’ve chosen to focus on adults who study for the pleasure of it — including people who are learning Italian for travel. Because I’ve learned from experience that for an adult who fits lessons into a break from work or after coming home in the evening, spending an hour and a half learning school vocabulary is completely pointless. A two-hour grammar focus on contracted prepositions is frustrating and demotivating. If you’re studying Italian in your free time, you want studying to feel like a pleasure. And you have every right to expect that.
Learning Italian for travel? – It’s all about approach.
That’s why my Italian beginner course takes a practical, functional approach — designed for people who want to learn to speak Italian without rushing, but also without wasting time. Grammar is studied, but above all it’s applied immediately, without accumulating theoretical concepts that don’t connect to anything real. And in all the materials I prepare, I use genuinely useful words and expressions from the very beginning — things that are easy to practise and easy to use straight away.
Someone learning Italian for travel doesn’t want to spend entire lessons with Mark from London asking Lisa from Lisbon which classroom the maths lesson with Professor Rossi is in. I teach the Italian my students will actually use in real situations — travel vocabulary, phrases for ordering at a restaurant, buying a train ticket, asking for directions, understanding a price in a shop. One important thing though: this doesn’t mean memorising these expressions to repeat them mechanically. That method doesn’t work — because when someone answers you in Italian, you won’t understand a word. My approach gives you the awareness and freedom to speak: the grammar you need to understand and build sentences, and the vocabulary to get started.
And there’s another reason — perhaps the most important one. If we’re learning Italian for travel, it’s so much more enjoyable when lessons already make us feel a little like we’re in Italy. When you study in your free time, feeling good is the most important thing — and that feeling makes all the difference.
Want to start learning Italian for your trips to Italy? No useless theory, no mechanical exercises — just a practical, targeted approach. Visit my beginner course page or book a free introductory call, no commitment. If you like my approach, we can start an Italian journey together.