Nothing can be more frustrating than to be in France and not been able to speak their language. For, I remember the days when I was among people chanting around in a language totally alien to me, and me, trying to bring a smile in my face while shaking my head from north to south doing as if I am getting everything what they are speaking about, and waiting impatiently for my French wife to do the translation - and I can't deny, that that was not the most comfortable period of my life.One of the most important thing thus becomes, once you land in this country, is to grasp their language as fast as possible. Unless, of course, you are planning a real short trip to this country and you have enough local French speaking acquaintances who can swim you through your brief visit.If you are a brand eater, I think nothing stands even nearby the Alliance Fran

Italian is one of the most widespread languages in the world, and speaking it can give you a tremendous sense of accomplishment, an edge in your career, and even a stronger bond with your ancestors if you are of Italian descent. There are many ways you can learn Italian, including textbooks, tapes, CDs, software, group classes or private lessons, but there are also ways you can begin or continue your studies of the Italian language entirely for FREE!1. Online: Online, you can join an active community of people who are learning the Italian language just like you. One site is Impariamo - http://www.impariamo.com - which in Italian means "let's learn". Impariamo is a forum where you can meet people from around the world who are learning Italian and share tips to improve your Italian language skills. It is also a great starting point for finding new tools that will help you develop your Italian skills - all for FREE! Impariamo also has a feature called Quiz of the Week, where you can have a new Italian language quiz delivered to your e-mail in-box each and every week. In addition to Impariamo, you can also find other online communities at Yahoo! Groups - http://groups.yahoo.com - or at MSN Groups - http://groups.msn.com. Simply type in "learn Italian" in the search box on either of these sites and you will find many groups that may appeal to you to join - again, for FREE!2. Offline: Offline, you can join a group in your geographic area whose members share your interest in learning the Italian language through a free online service called Meetup - http://italian.meetup.com. Meetup helps people find others who share similar interests, and form lasting, local community groups that regularly meet face-to-face. All ages and levels of proficiency are welcome to these group meetings! You can sign up to participate in any one of nearly 300 Italian language Meetup groups. Practicing your Italian among friends will help you improve your language skills significantly.Learning Italian allows you to immerse yourself in a rich and diverse culture, and this can open entirely new avenues of self-exploration and personal growth. Whether you want to the Italian language for personal or professional reasons, you can make new friends, have new experiences, and open yourself to a new and beautiful culture. Buon divertimento!Mindy Prian is the Site Administrator of http://www.impariamo.com, a warm, welcoming community of people from all over the world who interact with one another to improve their Italian language skills.

So, you have always been fascinated by Asian culture have you? Maybe you are someone who loves the martial arts; kung fu, tae-kwon-do, or karate. Perhaps you are interested in the cool oriental stores and like to buy many things from them to decorate your house. Maybe you like the peaceful society you see depicted in some Asian films. Or maybe you are just incredibly in love with the Asian languages such as Chinese, Japanese, and Korean.Whatever your interest is in Asia and its society, it could never hurt to know a little bit about the culture. In fact, learning about something more than is shown in action movies and your Korean dramas can be quite beneficial.My experience is with Korean culture and Korean language, but the culture is similar in most Asian countries. Language Families One of the main things you may have noticed is how incredibly different the Asian languages are from English. You come across languages such as Italian, Spanish, and French, and you can at least find some similarities in those languages and English. Yet there seem to be none between English and Asian languages! The fact is they just come from different language families. Most European languages will fall in the same language family as English. Many of these are in the Indo-European language families. Words will be similar between all of the languages that come from the same family.Asian languages such as Japanese and Korean are in the same language family, the Altaic family. You will find many similarites in these two languages. Mandarin Chinese comes from the Sino-Tibetan family.Altaic Family The Altaic family is named after the Alti Mountains. They are located in Central Asia. The Altaic Family consists of Turkish, Mongolian, Korean, and Japanese. Out of these, Turkish is the most western of the languages, while Korean and Japanese are more eastern.Sino-Tibetan Family The Sino-Tibetan Family consists of Mandarin Chinese. Languages in this language family are made up of one syllable words, but there are MANY. There is no simple alphabet to form these words, which causes the vast number of Chinese characters, making it one of the hardest languages to learn. You also must learn to speak, read, and write all separately. There is no reading a word and being able to speak it, nor can you hear one and guess on how it is spelled. Writing is still completely on it's own even if you can read, because you have to use proper stroke orders! Very time consuming to learn.There are also several tones in these languages. A change in pitch while saying a word could change the meaning of the word completely. It makes the language sound very pretty when spoken, but is incredibly difficult to learn! Sentence Structure As with many Asian languages, a common fact you will notice is many of the languages follow an SOV sentence structure. That is, Subject, Object, Verb. English tends to place the verb after the subject of the sentence. Asian languages place the verb at the very end of the sentence. The most important part of the sentence is saved for last Don't we all save the best for last?Although much of the culture evolves around the language, there is plenty more to culture. Korean culture is amazing in every way. Look forward to future articles covering Korean culture!http://www.learnkoreanlanguage.com is a site based on teaching the Korean language. It also provides details on Korean culture, Korean foods, Korean recipes, Korean music, everything Korean!

What? Kanji can be learned quickly? This seems an impossible dream to many students of Japanese who come from a non-kanji language culture. Even hiragana and katakana seem impossibly hard to the average beginner, so remembering kanji, with all their intricate strokes and multiple readings, can appear to be beyond the abilities of the human mind.But don't give up hope just yet! There are tools that can transform you from a kanji klutz to a veritable genius. That does not mean that it will take no work, sweat or tears. (I would be lying if I told you it would completely pain-free.) But you can gain a good grasp of kanji with a lot less these than you would think.So let's look at two approaches that can have you gobbling up kanji like there is no tomorrow. In Part 1, I will talk you through mnemonic methods, and then in Part 2 I will focus on methods that can benefit visual learners.Mnemonic Methods"Mnemonic" simply means a device, formula or rhyme used to assist memorization. An example of a mnemonic embedded in my mind from childhood is "Never Eat Shredded Wheat". As a rhyme it has nothing to do with navigation or geography, but it helped me learn the points of the compass.So let's have a look at the mnemonic approaches that can speed-up kanji learning.James Heisig's Remembering the Kanji SeriesHeisig's mnemonic-based approach is not only famous for the claims its practitioners have made of rapid kanji assimilation (1,000 kanji in 29 days, for example), but also for the critical flack it has attracted from traditionalists.Undoubtedly, the method has flaws: The student being encouraged to associate a single, very narrow and sometimes non-standard meaning with a particular kanji being a major one. However, the fact that Heisig's approach is geared to Westerners also has advantages: Focusing on the meaning before the pronunciation is of more practical value to the adult Western student, since while meaning is the key to understanding, the pronunciation of the kanji is of little value unless reading aloud.I came to this approach late, having used the good ol' rote memorization and drilling method of most traditional textbooks, so it has not been such a boon to me as it would be to someone starting from scratch. However, while using a computer to write Japanese at work has made my mind lazy when it comes to writing, Heisig's method keeps the shape of the kanji right in front of me when I do pick up pen and paper. And I am hoping to use book 3 to go well beyond the standard 1,945 character kanji set in the future - something I would not even consider attempting without using this technique.You can download pdf files of substantial sections of each of the books in this series for review here:James Heisig ? Remembering the Kanji Book 1
http://www.ic.nanzan-u.ac.jp/SHUBUNKEN/publications/miscPublications/Remembering_the_Kanji_1.htmJames Heisig ? Remembering the Kanji Book 2
http://www.ic.nanzan-u.ac.jp/SHUBUNKEN/publications/miscPublications/Remembering_the_Kanji_2.htmJames Heisig ? Remembering the Kanji Book 3
http://www.ic.nanzan-u.ac.jp/SHUBUNKEN/publications/miscPublications/Remembering_the_Kanji_3.htmKenneth Henshall's A Guide to Remembering Japanese CharactersNow, I should first state that, personally, I have not used this method in my own kanji study. However, while looking at ways to accelerate my kanji assimilation ability to joyou level (the 1,945 kanji set taught up to the end of high school in Japan) and beyond, I came across Henshall's method as the other major alternative to traditional repeat-until-you-go-mad methods.Henshall also employs mnemonics, creating a sentence to plant the image of the kanji deep in the learner's brain. The difference is that where Heisig takes a fast-and-loose approach with the meanings assigned to individual elements of each kanji in reaching his goal of creating a memorable mind-picture, Henshall traces the history of these elements in great scholastic detail.In my opinion (and the reason I personally chose Heisig over Henshall for my own study), the academic strength of Henshall's analysis is its biggest weakness as a memorization tool: If you have an excellent memory, or if you already know the kanji anyway and are interested in their etymological roots, then Henshall will give you a depth of knowledge that will impress even your native speaker Japanese friends. However, if you do not have an almost-photographic memory, and mastering kanji in a sensible time period is your priority, you will probably find that this detailed and obscure analysis does not provide the compelling memory "hook" that Heisig's method does.Other Mnemonic Kanji Study MethodsIn addition to these two main players you may also want to consider 2001 Kanji by Father Joseph R. De Roo (although its availability is questionable) or Kanji ABC by Forester and Tamura as alternative approaches.If you are a visual learner, skip on to Part 2 and discover the methods that can work best with your learning style.About the Author
Stephen Munday lives in Japan and is the creator of http://www.japanese-name-translation.com/ where you can download images of over 2,200 names in kanji or get a romantic calligraphy gift.This article is

My dad likes to say, he was made in Italy, but born in Brooklyn New York. You see his parents left Palermo, Sicily in February 1955 and sailed by boat to America. My nonna (Italian for grandmother) was six months pregnant at the time and was quite ill through out the month's passage. Like most of the immigrants however, all she cared about was that her son be born in America, and thus immediately become a United States citizen. My grandparents, immediately settled in Sicilian-Italian neighborhood called Bensonhurst, and the language of choice was Sicilian, of course. By the time my dad was 10 months old, he was saying words in Sicilian and by the time he was a year-old, he was able to put sentences together. That's why it's no surprise to me that my dad was able to learn the English language as quickly as he did.At my nonna's encouragement, from the moment, he was able to manipulate a pencil, my dad began tracing and then copying the letters on the grocery boxes my grandmother brought home every day from the supermarket. He chuckles every time he gets to tell the story how Ronzoni products, not only filled his stomach, but his mind as well. Dad says he used to get very upset if his mom put the groceries away before he had had a chance to trace and/or copy the letters on the grocery boxes. Nonna would have to take all the boxes out that she had stored away in the pantry in order to satisfy my dad.Nonna, who naturally did not speak any English, would sit with my dad, and teach him the names of the letters. The Italian language consists of 21 letters however, (there is no H, J, K, W, X) as opposed to 26 letters in the English language. So he did not learn the names of these letters until he began first grade ( there was no kindergarten class available at that time).Dad likes to brag about his perfect penmanship because the only "A" he received in his first semester of school was in penmanship, a direct result of his meticulous tracing and copying of the letters off the grocery products.How did all this lead to dad's learning the English language, so quickly? "The familiarity with the letters and their sounds made learning quite easy for me" he says. The only thing that he had little trouble with was learning the names and proper pronunciation of English's H, J, K, W and X, but even that he said didn't take too long. I asked him if there was the equivalent of "Sesame Street' in his time that helped accelerate his learning the English language."The only 'Sesame Street' he knew of was downtown someplace. We didn't even have a TV, he chuckles. What we did have instead were mothers and fastidious nuns who were persistent and indefatigable in their teaching efforts, despite the huge classes they were assigned.""After teaching the students the names and pronunciation of each letter, the nuns then began to teach us the sounds of the vowels and the consonants. Only after the vast majority of the class had mastered the pronunciations did they then begin teaching us three letter words. Each word was presented with a picture to help us remember the spelling, pronunciation and its meaning. Each student individually had to pronounce the word, spell the word and pronounce the word again, before we could move on.
Once we were familiar with enough persons, places and things we began to learn simple verbs like run, hit, jump, catch, fall and so forth. We drew the sentences as well, what I mean is, if the sentence was: 'The boy hit the ball,' we would have a picture of a boy, a bat and the ball. It was constant reinforcement. Looking back I presume that they were trying to engage as many of our senses as possible, which I understand, accelerates learning."My dad is genuinely excited about this topic. He makes it clear though that he dislikes the teaching modalities used in elementary school today. He particularly loathes kid-code, a technique which teaches kids to spell words, like they are sound. To clarify the reason why my dad is so "up to snuff" on the way in which some elementary schools work is that though my dad once was a very successful investment banker in 1994 he was struck with a malignant brain tumor that left him disabled and thus he became Mr. Mom. His being able to stay home allowed him to become somewhat like my personal tutor and in turn he was able to see the way in which I both regressed and progressed in school. Kid code he states was something that he wishes would have never been invented."If one was teaching Italian, this would be an excellent way to teach kids to read because every letter and combination of letters in the Italian language is pronounced the same way each and every time. In English, we have so many homonyms and different pronunciations for the same words, as well as mysterious silent letters, which are confusing enough, but when combined with the kid-spell it is deleterious to the student's learning."
I wish that I could have been in one of those classes that forbid the enforcement of kid code but unfortunately I was not that lucky. Kid code for me as well as my fellow classmates form back then still have a hard time spelling sometimes the most simple of words. Though in my mind there is no reason to use such a method I believe some teachers rely on kid code to see what levels of spelling their students are at. Other teachers however I feel use this methodology out of pure laziness which in all honesty is what I believe the case was with my teachers."What was wrong with Dick and Jane, my dad asks rhetorically." I answered anyway, "I don't know," I told him, "I learned kid-code, remember." "I remember, and that's why you and Al's Gals (my girlfriends affectionately call themselves Al's Gals to this day) can't spell for beans," he says. I can't argue the fact we are a generation of poor spellers and I think he's correct, in that kid-code is to blame, at least to some extent. "Dad let's talk about 'Dick and Jane' if you don't mind." "Ann Marie, they were primers used in the elementary school's early grades. Every page was illustrated and had no more than a sentence or two. So even if you couldn't figure out what was being said in the written word, you would almost certainly be able to infer it from the illustration. I think the same could also be said about the Dr. Seuss books, though the preposterous stories sometimes, I think had a negative effect.""How long did the nuns continue to use 'Dick and Jane'" I queried. "For the first grade only, then we had anthologies which contained slightly more sophisticated language, still accompanied by illustrations. At some point during the second grade, Mrs. McNamara introduced us to new single volume story books, still with illustrations, and this process continued grade after grade. By the time, I had completed the fifth grade I had a well-rounded vocabulary and good reading comprehension skills. Early on in the sixth grade, a friend's dad began to take us to the public library each Saturday morning. It was about a mile walk. There was a four book limit, which we argued about with the librarian, every visit. About the same time, I began writing short stories for my classmates' entertainment and you'll get a kick out of this, the girls began asking me to write love notes for them to give to their boyfriends. I was the Cyrano de Bergerac of my time."I recently was privy to a conversation my dad had with two former classmates from the sixth grade, who later married. The woman was one of my dad's former clients, for whom he had performed his literary magic. Apparently, the woman had never told her husband about the true author of many of her letters, until that conversation. The three of them laughed hysterically when the proverbial cat was let out of the bag.
I asked dad if there were anything else that might have contributed to his learning and mastering English as well as he had. I was surprised at his answer. "I think nonna had a influence on me. (Ironically nonna had never gone beyond the third grade.) She not only helped me learn the alphabet, she would sit with me and we would read the assignments together. Since at that point, I knew more than her I had become the teacher. That was another way to reinforce what I had learned in class, moreover, teaching nonna contributed greatly to my love for reading."As I contemplate how dad learned to master English at such a young age, without the slightest knowledge of the language, what stands out the most is, nonna's participation in the process. This is certainly an element that's missing in our society today, primarily because of two worker families. As a future elementary school teacher, I plan on replicating the teaching methods of those nuns that taught my dad and countless others not only how to read but to love reading. If the "Dick and Jane" books are not part of the curriculum, where ever I begin teaching, I will still use the inherent method of "Dick and Jane." To learn more about me and my family visit our website lunchbagnotes.comAnn Marie Parisi is a recent graduate from California Lutheran University where she earned a degree in elementary education. She expects to begin her teaching career this fall. She is an author and speaker along with her dad and brother. She resides with her family in Agoura Hills, CA.

In a previous article, you read that to establih your own lists was the best way to learn vocabulary as fast as possible. Let's study what an effective list looks like.
Among prejudices about languages, there is the following: you need to establish huge lists in order to acquire as many words as possible.
WRONG !
The most effective list contains 5 to 6 words at a time. Yes! Your larger list contains 6 words. Are you still afraid of the task? I'm sure you can deal with 6 words at a time.
If you could draw your memory, you would draw a two room flat. The first room, your instant memory, is large enough for 6 items. Your deep memory, the second room, has no limit, but it can receive no more than 6 items at a time and wants you to confirm your order.
What happens when you fight against Nature?
If you go on solliciting your instant memory and try to add a new item when there is no room left, it will make room for this new item (your memory is obedient, from a certain point of view) by pushing out something else. The newcomer is not added, it replaces the older in the queue. If you are lucky, the previous 6 items in your deep memory had been stored when you tried to add one and the pushed-out word enters your deep memory. More often, as you have experienced, it disappears.
That's the reason why the memory seems a bit temperamental as long as you don't know how it works.If you are determined to learn a foreign language, you can't rely on luck to enrich your vocabulary.
Don't fight against Nature, use it.
Take advantage of this human feature instead of struggling with it. You have got six-item boxes, but the number of boxes is unlimited, and anyway, long lists are boring.
Fill a box, send it, confirm your order! again and again. It is the fastest and best way to enrich your vocabulary. Do you recognize the "first five minute factor"? When you begin a novel, when you start watching a movie, you meet the characters. Honestly, how often do you have to rewind the tape to encounter them a second time? Never. Neither need you to re-read the first chapter of a book. Though I admit I have some trouble with Dostoievski's characters.)
Make the first five minute factor the slave of your memory.

Check 6 words in a dictionary.
Learn them. Each time it is possible, learn words in association (see part II): table/chair, son/daughter, inside/outside, high/low etc. Make associations that are meaningful for you. I think easy to learn "son" and "daughter" but you may feel easier to learn "son" and "boy". Any association that works for you is a good one.
Take a break in order to empty your immediate memory. (For me, singing a verse is enough.) Let the new words "sleep" for an hour while you fill other boxes. At the end of the session, revise everything.
The day after, revise the whole list again, carefully, box by
box, before filling a new one.

It seems slow to learn that way? It is not. Remember the waste of time it has been to learn and re-learn the same words in your school years, and still not to know them. Put this method on trial while waiting for the next issue:
why and how to become a kind of ventriloquist.Gabrielle Guichard, a French teacher who can be reached on GabrielleGuichard.com and listened to on FrenchPodcasting.com

The main feature you have to master, in order to call yourself a ventriloquist, is to speak without moving your lips. It is not that difficult. There is a trick, of course. The sounds M, B and P
make your lips move, as make the sounds V and F but in a lesser way. So, in order to be a ventriloquist, you should ban any word with m, b or p inside and avoid to pronounce f-v words. If your name is Mabel or Patrick, choose a stage name!Try to say where you come from. Try right now. It is the best way to understand how it works exactly.
"I come from...". No, your lips are moving.
Try again: "I was born in..." Far better! You are almost a ventriloquist.There is a competition of this kind among teachers; for example: How to express "I have lost my cell phone and my credit card near the 4WD garage" in Latin. (I agree, Latin teachers are, well, Latin teachers.)
It is very alike the game you played in the schoolyard: you had
to answer to a lot of questions using such required word but avoiding such other. Remember! It was not easy to place "rhinoceros" while avoiding "zoo" when asked: "Where were you on Sunday?"; nevertheless, you managed to! You were a gifted ventriloquist and avoided the m-b-p word "zoo".In your own language, you use circumlocutions to exclude certain words. In a parallel step, speaking a foreign language is learning how to use circumlocutions in order to avoid some words:
those you don't know.Think of the words you do not know as your m-b-p words.Do not try to pronounce m-b-p words without moving your lips, you
would spend precious time for nothing. Do not fight against obstacles, get round them. Ventriloquists do not master the movements of their lips, they choose their words.Whatever language you choose to learn, there are always several ways to express something.Gabrielle Guichard, a French teacher who can be reached on GabrielleGuichard.com and listened to on FrenchPodcasting.com

Imagine a child sitting in front of a desk, his head in his hands, and mumbling various lists of words over and over. Does this child remind you of your own experience? If yes, I bet that "list of words" does not sound appealing to you. You are almost ready to swear that they do not work. Before you mortgage your part of paradise, it may be wise to make sure you are right.You can open a dictionary and begin to learn it by heart (a dictionary is no more than a list of words). There are many illustrated dictionaries that offer you the same resources as plenty of websites do by displaying colorful pictures with captions. You know that these tools exist because you have already tried to enrich your vocabulary that way. The scope of the task curbed your enthusiam.Though, it is not a bad way to learn vocabulary, it is even the best way for one person: the author of the list.Why?You are unique. Your memory is unique, not only because your memories are yours, and only yours, but also because the way you store them is yours and only yours. For a large part, memory is about association of ideas and the associations you make depend on your experience.Let's study an example to make it clear. Ask anyone to give you a word in relation with the common word "horse". You will get mare, race, chivalry or Trojan, etc, depending on the person who answers.He who answered "mare" might go on with stable, foal and even cow and other farm animals; he who said "race" would probably go on with racecourse and tote. Obviously, their experiences of life are quite different. "Chivalry" would lead to King Arthur, coat of mail and tournament while "Trojan" would meet Homer, odyssey, god and goddess.If you are a linguist, it is very likely that you associate horse to horseback, horsehair, horseman and horseplay and think that your list is easy to remember. On the contrary, if you are not interested in the Middle-Age History, the "chivalry" list will slip your mind.The more personal the links between the words, the easier the way to learn them. That is why a list works at its best for its author. The connections between the words pre-exist in the author's head.So, pave your way, prepare your own list!

It will fit in with your way of thinking
It will meet with your center of interests
It will meet with your requirements
It will be half-learnt just by looking for the words you want to know

In the third issue, we will see how to take advantage of scientific studies about human memory. There are many ways to learn a foreign language. Why would you choose the hardest one?Gabrielle GuichardA French teacher who can be reached on GabrielleGuichard.com and listened to on FrenchPodcasting.com

Many people get confused as to the difference between an interpreter and a translator. There is a common tendency to think translators interpreter, or that interpreters translate. In fact, the two are very separate jobs requiring different skills. To explain who and/or what an interpreter as opposed to a translator we set out the main differences between interpreting and translation.Interpreting vs. TranslationOn a basic level it would appear that there is little difference between an interpreter and a translator. One translates spoken words and the other written words. However, the differences in how the job is carried out, the pressures, requirements, skills and talents are many.A translator must be able to write well and be able to express words, phrases, innuendos and other linguistic nuances between languages on paper. A translator has the luxury of time, resources (dictionaries, etc), reference material and the freedom to take a break when needed. Their pressures are relatively limited.Translators only work into their native languages to assure accuracy in both linguistic and cultural senses. Translators therefore, it could be argued, are not completely bilingual. They may be able to deal effectively with written sources but when it comes to orally translating, it is a different skill.A translator therefore has a one dimensional aspect to their work. They deal with written words and language that come from paper and return to paper.An interpreter, on the other hand, has to be able to translate spoken words in two directions. They do this using no resources or reference material bar their knowledge and expertise. An interpreter is required to find linguistic solutions to problems on the spot. The pressure therefore can be quite intense.In addition to interpreting, the interpreter must also act as a bridge between people, relaying tone, intentions and emotions. Where an interpreter is caught between cross fire they need to demonstrate great professionalism and diplomacy. Their roles are therefore much more complex as they have to deal with both language and people.What does an Interpreter do?There are two ways of interpreting known as consecutive and simultaneous.Simultaneous interpreting involves interpreting in 'real time'. Many would have seen an interpreter sitting in a booth wearing a pair of headphones and speaking into a microphone at a conference or large diplomatic meeting such as the EU or UN. A simultaneous interpreter has the unenviable task of quickly digesting what one person is saying before immediately translating it to others. One of the key skills simultaneous interpreters must demonstrate is decisiveness. They must think quickly and on their feet.Consecutive interpreting is carried out in face to face meetings, speeches or court cases. A speaker will usually stop at regular junctures, say every few sentences, and have the interpreter translate, before proceeding. A key skill involved in consecutive interpreting is the ability to remember what has been said.What do you need?In short, if you need someone to translate something that is written you need the services of a translator. If you need someone to translate the spoken word, you need an interpreter.Neil Payne is Director of Kwintessential, a London based consultanct providing a range of cross cultural service including interpreters:
http://www.kwintessential.co.uk/translation/interpretation.html

Are you interested in learning the Italian language right in your own hometown? There are several options that you can explore to find the Italian classes that are just perfect for you! First, you should consider whether you would you enjoy the interaction that takes place among students in group classes, or if you would prefer the one-on-one attention of a private instructor.1. Group classes at community colleges: One way to learn Italian in your hometown is to find a community college that offers Italian classes in your area. The internet can be an invaluable resource and with a few clicks of the mouse you can identify exactly where there are Italian language courses available. For example, if you live in the U.S. you can go to www.community-college.org, where you will find a complete directory of all of the community colleges throughout the country. Many of them offer evening or even online classes! Simply pick the college or colleges that can be found near you and check out their curriculum.2. Group classes at a private school or institution: Another approach would be to find an independent language school where you can take group lessons. Do you have a Berlitz near you? How about an Inlingua Center? A great way to find the best schools in your area is to talk with people in the Italian community where you live! Many Italian communities even have websites that link to valuable resources. For example, you can find out about the Italian community in Washington, DC at www.italcultusa.org, in New York at www.italcultny.org, in Chicago at www.iicch.org, in Los Angeles at www.iicusa.org or in San Francisco at www.sfiic.org. You can find an Italian community near you simply by going to www.google.com and typing in "Italian community in (Your Hometown)."3. Private lessons: Not convinced that college classes or group lessons are for you? While group classes are more interactive and dynamic, you get less of the teacher's attention. So, how about taking private classes? There are many ways to find a good instructor. For example, you could post a free "in search of Italian instructor" ad at Craigslist - www.craigslist.org - if you live in an area that the site serves. Or, you could place an ad for free in a local newspaper or journal.Italians take great pride in teaching their native language to non-native speakers, so simply by reaching out and asking questions, you are sure to find plenty of good advice and helpful people. Buon divertimento!Mindy Prian is the Site Administrator of http://www.impariamo.com, a warm, welcoming community of people from all over the world who interact with one another to improve their Italian language skills.