I have to admit it, I read more non fiction than fiction books…but what counts is that I read, someone would say. Recently I have “read” a special book. Its title is “Lettura+Ascolto” [Reading+Listening], by Maurizio Falghera.

Why is it a special book? Well, because it’s a book to read and listen to at the same time, just like most of my books.

What do you need reading and listening at the same time for? That’s what the author wants to explain in the easiest way. And he does it in a simple way, although he still quotes authoritative sources and experiences.

One among many was very interesting for me and I quote it below from the original source found on the internet.

“This study investigated the effects of simultaneously reading and listening to the same text on comprehension and fluency gains for basic-level English language learners at a university in Puerto Rico. The quiz scores and fluency rates of two English lab groups who read and listened to E. B. White’s novel Charlotte’s Web were compared to the scores and rates of two other English lab groups who silently read the same novel. The listening-while-reading group outscored the reading-only group on all eight weekly comprehension quizzes; for four of those quizzes, the difference was statistically significant.”

Another very important point in the book Lettura + Ascolto that could be interesting to you who are learning the Italian language is the fact that “Using audiobooks […] while learning the English language [or any other language, such as Italian in your case] is an absolutely necessary everyday tool in schools, colleges, universities, both in Italy and abroad. And this because it has been proven beyond any doubt that reading a written text and listening to it at the same time increases the memory retention of vocabulary, of grammar and synthax of the language, as well as it adds a remarkable amount of information about culture, history and customs. Some American studies calculate that the increase of the linguistic learning due to this method of listening and reading may even be of 30-50%.”

I have always thought that adding a sensory channel (in this case the auditory channel) to what you do, reinforces the experience and speeds up the learning. That’s why I’ve often tried to get the audiobook (the unabridged version) for the books I read. Simply because it gives me a much deeper experience.

And in creating my books, I always read aloud and record the texts, so that you have a multilevel learning experience, a whole-brain learning experience. Yes, because if you use my books in the way I suggest, you will have the opportunity to relax while listening, to read and listen at the same time to absorb their content, words and expressions, as well as the conveyed skills.

Lettura + Ascolto is a nice non fiction book, aimed at Italians (so the level is very high) that allows you to experience what it talks about in the same moment when you read and listen to it (it is available as book with mp3 CD; and audio-eBook versions).

One thing which is not mentioned in the Lettura + Ascolto book and it’s what I consider to be the next step in the learning process. After you have listened to the book, after you read it and listened to it, it’s time to get in the more active phase of the learning. And how can you do it?

Well, you can for example use a technique that many international polyglots use very often: shadowing!

You don’t know what shadowing is? It’s a technique that consists in speaking “fluidily” and (almost) at the same time, by saying the same things that you listen to.

It’s good for you to know that there are several ways of practising it and in any case I suggest you do it first only after listening to and then after reading and listening to the audio you want to practise it with.

Here you have some examples of ways of practising shadowing:

1. The “easiest” way is to practise shadowing (I repeat it: aloud) while reading the text with your eyes and listening to the audio at the same time;

2. When you get good at the first method, you can simply close your eyes, listen to the audio and say aloud what you are listening to (almost) at the same time;

3. When you get good with the preceding methods, you can add some “challenges”, for example you can practise shadowing while walking, or while doing some brain gym (as well as all those movements involving both sides of your body: I like to touch my nose with my right hand while touching the right ear with my left hand as fast as I can… I know, you will feel a bit silly (or crazy) while doing it, but I guarantee that it’s very useful. And I bet it won’t be easy to do it for you;-)

If you asked me why you should practise shadowing, I could answer you with what they write at Prudl.

“Our experience as language learners has convinced us that shadowing is a truly effective method. In a nutshell, it consists of mimicking out loud a native speaker. As many of the learner’s senses as possible are involved. Hence, it encourages proper accent formation and accelerates the rate of vocabulary acquisition. In other words, shadowing creates the optimal conditions for your brain to form good habits right from the beginning.”

This could be translated into Italian like this (more or less):

“La nostra esperienza come studenti di lingue [straniere] ci ha convinti che lo shadowing è un metodo veramente efficace. In estrema sintesi, consiste nell’imitare a voce alta un parlante nativo. La maggior parte dei sensi dello studente viene coinvolta. Di conseguenza, incoraggia la corretta formazione dell’accento e accelera la velocità di acquisizione del vocabolario. In altre parole, lo shadowing crea le condizioni ottimali affinché il tuo cervello formi delle abitudini giuste fin dall’inizio.”

Now that you know what shadoing is, you’ll just have to start and practise it with the texts that you like the most. You could even start and practise it with my books;-)

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Have you ever heard of the placebo effect? And what about nocebo? What do you know about them? Can you make a quick mind map out of the word “placebo” and “nocebo” even if you haven’t ever heard of those words? Do it anyway, it’ll help you activate your brain and be ready to read further. Write down all the words and associations that come to your mind as quickly as you can.

Several years ago I listened to a story about a cancer patient who was injected a cure which he believed was a panacea (a cure for all illnesses). He was very ill but after he started with the cure he felt well again and could go back to his normal life. The fact is that this cure was not giving the same results with all other patients it was tested on. Thus the newspapers started publishing about the failure of this cure. As soon as the patient read these news he started feeling worse again. So he went back to his doctor and the doctor told him that he would inject him with a double strenght dose of the medicine, but, being this not yet tested, he needed the patient to sign some papers, to free him of responsibility. Again he started to feel well, the illness wasn’t there anymore and he could go back to his normal life. What he didn’t know was that the doctor injected him with pure sterile water. The patient’s belief alone, independent of the value of the medication, produced his recovery. He was well for two months, then again appeared in the national press that that drug treatment was wortless. After the patient read those articles, he died within 2 days.

This is a story that really explains what both placebo and nocebo effects are. When the patient believed he was injected with a wonder drug, he healed (placebo), when he knew he was injected with a worthless drug, he worsened (nocebo). In my opinion the above story warns everyone about what we believe. I’ve already written about what I think about beliefs. Here I would like to suggest a way to utilize your beliefs and the placebo effect. And the best way to use them comes from the following story.

In a book by doctor Roy Martina, titled in Italian “La formula per la vita“, the author writes that placebo also work when the patient knows that he’s getting a placebo. He writes about his brother Arnold who was having a kindney transplant. Dr. Martina suggested him that when he looked at the intravenous drip he would be attached to after the surgery, he’d think that in that solution there were nutrients and vitamins and to be thankful to those vitamins. Anytime the nurse brought him pills, he had to say:”Thank you for bringing me my vitamins“. The doctor warned Arnold that the nurse would insist that those were real drugs and not vitamins: he told him not to believe her and to go on repeating himself and her that those were vitamins. Roy Martina’s brother also had to be thankful for the kidney and tell “it” that “it” was welcome in his body. Arnold followed his brother’s advice and healed faster than any other patient undergoing kindey transplant.

What has all this to do with learning a language? Do I have to write it clearly? What you believe about your ability to learn the language will affect it, thus why don’t you use positive affirmations with conviction so that you’ll create your new reality? What do you think about a  reality where you speak Italian like an Italian mothertongue? Whatever you answer, this is a belief…And what do you want to believe today?

By the way, until recently I thought that the story about the above cancer patient was  just a story that people tell to let you understand the power of your mind…Well…It wasn’t just a “story”, it is  a fact happened around 1950 to a patient of doctor Bruno Klopfer, a researcher involved in the testing of the drug  Krebiozen. You can find reference of this story on the book by Simonton O.C. and others, titled Getting Well Again (Bantam 1978, USA ISDN 0-553-28033-3).

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February is usually the month that I dedicate to my self and my personal growth (and to my family as well;-). And this is the time when I read about subjects that I don’t usually read about.

This time I read the book Unfair advantage by Robert Kyiosaki.

Who’s Robert Kyiosaki? He’s a businessman and writer about interesting books about financial intelligence (Rich Dad, Poor dad among others).

He tells what he learned about after attending a conference by dr. Buckminster Fuller (Who’s he?)

There he heard him saying:

I don’t work for money. I dedicated all my life to serve others. […] The more people I serve , the more effective I become”.

This is loosely translated from the Italian edition of the book that I own, where it’s written:

“Io non lavoro per il denaro. Ho dedicato la mia vita al servizio degli altri. […] Più persone servo, più efficace divento”.

Robert Kyiosaky also writes about what he calls the laws of compensation / le leggi del compenso (I’d have translated it compensazione, but I am not the translator of the book;-):

1. Reciprocity: give and you’ll receive / Reciprocità: dai e riceverai.

2. Learn to give more. / Impara a dare di più.

3. Have a leverage effect on the power of the financial instruction that increases in geometrical proportion / Abbi un effetto di leva sul potere dell’istruzione finanziaria in proporzione geometrica.

In an interesting article posted on the Success Magazine website, Kyiosaki himself writes that:

“Returns are minimal in spite of massive effort at the start, yet returns can be massive with minimal effort over time.

How can you learn something useful for your Italian learning from this book? Is that even possible to learn something related to Italian learning in this book?;-)

Let me tell you about another important point that Kyiosaki writes about.

The cone of learning by Edgard Dale.

I actually hadn’t read about this, so for me it was a great thing to read about.

By looking at it, you can notice that:

The more passive you are, the less you learn. The more active you are the more you learn.

And you’ll learn a lot more when you do these things:

Doing a dramatic presentation.

Simulating the real experience

Doing the real thing.

MMMM….How can I correlate this with language learning?

I already know that some authors talk about what is called silent period…(Marvin Brown and Vera F. Birkenbihl)…and they do affirm that if you want to really acquire a language and especially the proper pronunciation even if you are more than 6 years old, you need to do a lot of passive listening of comprehensible input (or listening in a relaxed way as I let you do in Speak Italian Magically and Awaken your Italian).

I also agree on what is said on the cone of learning….

So what is my conclusion?

That after doing a lot of passive (or relaxed) listening of comprehensible input (i.e. : Italian that you really comprehend), you really need to be active and SPEAK!!!

How can you speak?

You can come to Italy or you can talk to any Italian through Skype…Or you can make some role play (like the ones that you usually do in a school that uses the communicative approach). Or you can also do some shadowing (See Prof. Arguelles).

But what’s more important…HAVE FUN WHILE LEARNING AND SPEAKING ITALIAN!!!

And you, what do you think about all this?

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What questions could you ask yourself to learn Italian faster?

Don’t you  know the power of questions? If you haven’t already, check what I wrote on this article of mine.

Then come back here, to know more about solution-focused questions…

What are they? What do you think?

Now, let me tell you briefly about solution-focused interviewing…

Developed in the 1980s by De Shazer and Berg, psychologists at the Brief Family Center in Milwaukee, it has been adapted to work in other fields, such as coaching (see Jackson and McKergow, authors of The Solution Focus).

It contains the following principles:

1) The class of problems is distinct from the class of solutions…Focus on solutions, instead of problems: what is your ideal perfect future? If you are here is because you want to speak Italian very well, aren’t you?

2) The client is the expert. You are the one who knows what’s best for you, what part of the learning you need to focus more on.

3) If it works, don’t fix it. If you are very good at doing something in Italian (for example you are so good at ordering cappuccinos;-), why should you change the way you do it?

4) If something works (better), do more of it.  If you find that something really helps in improving your Italian, what about doing more of it? Do you think this would help?

5) Look for “differences that make a difference”.  Do you remember that time you spoke Italian very well (or any other foreign language)? What made that difference that made you act that way? What  made everything work out so well?

6) If something does not work, do something else. If learning any tiny detail of grammar, didn’t lead you to fluency, why don’t you do something else?

After reading thoroughly several books on the subject, including 1001 solution-focused questions by Frederike Bannink, I thought to introduce solution-focused questions to Italian learning…So in Awaken your Italian, you’ll find 12 of them.

And as a special bonus to the readers of this blog, here you also have the spoken version of them with Kevin Macleood’s music to download  to your mp3 reader and a sentence game to have fun with!

Click on mp3 to listen to what I call domande potenzianti (empowering questions) . Click on Start to play the game I created;-)!

Domande Potenzianti

If you enjoy this kind of game, check this other page out!

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Imagine just for a moment that you were asked to lift 365 pounds even if you haven’t been training for several months…

What would your first reaction be?

Mine would have been “Dai, che dici?“:-)

And what if they told you that if you got relaxed and imagined the lift vividly, you would actually do it?

Would you believe it?

This was the situation in which Charles Garfield found himself in 1976, when he met a group of Soviet doctors. By the way, who’s Charles Garfield? He’s the author of several books…and also the one I’ll tell you in a little while.

Before reading further, answer this: Have you ever read about mental training? What do you know about it?

Stop for a moment and create a little and quick mind map about it…

Then look a the following mind map, which I made out of the 1984 book “Peak Performance” by C. Garfield and H. Z. Bennet.

Well, this is my personal and quick mind map, so let me resume it for you.

This is actually about the pillar of mental training: VOLUNTARY RELAXATION, which according to the authors can be achieved with two 15 minute sessions a day in three months…Very quickly here are the steps:

1) First you need to EXPLORE your body, voluntarily tense it and then relax;

2) Then you need to focus on DIAPHRAGMATIC BREATHING. The authors suggest the following pattern:

• fill in your lungs completely, breathing in through your nose;
• hold your breaths for ten seconds;
• release your breath with a sight of relief, exhaling through your mouth.

[I talked about a different and also effective pattern on this post]

3)  The AUTOGENIC TRAINING phase, where you (in sequence and in the due time):

• mentally “wear” a relaxation mask;
• feel your body heavy;
• feel your  body warm;
• calm your heart;
• create warmth in your stomach;
• cool your forehead.

4) once you are deeply relaxed you add MENTAL REHEARSAL.

Of course this is just a quick summary of the Peak Performance book, that, although dated (it’s 27 years old!),  contains a lot of useful information about the subject.

Sometimes, I wonder what you think while reading these posts…

And I imagine you asking me: “And what has this to do with Italian learning”?

Well, some principles of mental training were already in my Speak Italian Magically book, even though the relaxing phase was not so deep as the one required by Peak Performance standards.

Several months ago, after reading an article of Tim Ferris, I thought “why can’t I  adapt mental training techniques to let you speak better Italian in shorter time than normal”?

So, I researched the subject and found out about several authors (Ivan Barzakov, Ed Strachar, Richard Bandler and Garner Thomson, Rubin Battino, and many more) who have talked about mental training,  learning, taking decisions and following them through.

And then I realized that you don’t need three months to mentally train. It could be much faster than that.

And I started to put everything together, connecting the dots, as I enjoy to say, to create my new book, which I consider my contribution to 2012, as a year where we’ll have a better world.

In fact, 2012 is about to come and many are talking about the implications that this year might have. Pessimists imply that this would be the end of the world, optimists say that this will be the year of the AWAKENING. What do I think about?

Well, of course, I am a positive person, and as that, I AM SURE THAT something positive will happen by the end of the next year.

What will happen?

Who knows…Anyway, I do think that everyone should contribute to a better world.

And then I thought, how can I contribute to a better world, being just an humble Italian teacher for foreigners?

Of course it’s been  a while that I’ve been thinking about an answer to this question.

And of course there’s no right answer to this.

This book  is just one of my answers to it.

And what’s the title?

RISVEGLIA IL TUO ITALIANO! AWAKEN YOUR ITALIAN!

Enjoy it! Insert the following discount code before checking out to save: 3264T874 Click here and Awaken Your Italian!

Ebook version will come soon!

Buon Natale e felice anno nuovo da Antonio!

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Do you remember the song that sang “BREATHE”?

Don’t you know it?

I found a Youtube video for you. Here’s the song:

But, wait a minute: wasn’t this a blog about learning Italian? What does the song has to do with Italian learning?

Read further and you’ll discover.

Last month I purchased a biofeedback device…an IOM, to be precise.

Why did I do that? Well, because lately I’ve been interested in tools to improve my mind and body…and I read that it is possible nowadays to check and control your personal bio signals through these little machines called biofeedback (even though the one I bought is actually an active feedback machine)…And I read that you could even control your hearth rate and relax very deeply.

Wasn’t this a thing that only yogis could do? After all when I was at school, a teacher taught me that we cannot control our heart, as it is an unvolontary muscle.

Uhmmmm….Did I believe the teacher? Yes, of course. But then I started suspecting that this wasn’t totally true when I started to practice meditation last year. But, what could I do? I didn’t have anything to prove that teacher wrong (even if by now it really doesn’t matter anymore ;-)…Untill I bought this biofeedback machine and  realised that through a simple breathing pattern I could slower my hearth rate! And the producer of this machine says that “the achievement of a ten second sine wave pattern [of the heart] correlates with optimal functionality of the major bodily systems including blood pressure, cognition, the immune system and mood”.

Then another AHA moment happened to me. What if I used this breathing  pattern before learning something? Would this help? After all they say that it helps with cognition too.

I tried it and I am very happy for doing it.

The consequence of the breathing pattern is that you get deeply relaxed. Does being relaxed help in learning a language?

According to prof. Stephen Krashen it does.  This American professor actually offered a set of hypoteses on the acquisition of  a second language. One of them is the affective filter hypotheses. By it prof. Krashen refers to the affective factors which may block or facilitate acquisition. And being relaxed does help with the acquisition of a language.

The breathing  exercise is very simple…and in my opinion it can improve any learning experience. But this is just my opinion. I’ll leave it up to you to try it.

If you want to try it with the Speak Italian Magically audios…just get your mp3 reader ready just before starting the process.

Here’s how to breath before learning Italian or anything else:

Sit quietly and still your body. Close your eyes and  focus on your breathing. Slowly breathe in (while counting in your mind from 1 to 5 inyour own personal rythm) and slowly breathe out (while counting in your mind from 1 to 5 in your own personal rythm). If you find your mind wander, just aknowledge it, accept it and start again with the breathing pattern. Continue for at least 5 minutes (and not more than 20, they suggest) and then let the audio start (click on play). Continue with the same breathing pattern while listening.  At the end, just take three faster deep breaths for you to awake and strech your muscles. NEVER DO this exercise while driving cars or any machine, as while practicing it you are supposed to be focused on your breathing, not on the car!

I still think that it’s all about connecting the dots and I hope this blog post helps you connect the dots too .

Buon divertimento!

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What does Daniel Tammet report about mental training?

Wait a minute, don’t you know who Daniel Tammet is? Then you should check this entry on Wikipedia (in Italian) or watch this 48 minute video, that I found on Youtube:

Well, today I started reading his second book (I haven’t read his first one yet), Embracing the wide Sky, available everywhere and about to be print in Italian too…

As usual I created a mind map before reading it, so that I can focus and get even more interested in the book…

Then, I started rapid reading it when I found about this experiment, that neuroscientist Alvaro Pasqual-Leone held.

“…taught a group of non musician volunteers to play a simple fivefinger piano exercise, then he had them practise in the lab for two hours a day for five days. After a week, brain scans of the volunteers showed an increase in the amount of territory the brain devotes to moving the fingers”

Nothing extraordinary till now, you would say. Read further…

“Pasqual-Leone then repeted the experiment with another group of volunteers, asking them this time to rehearse the same five-finger sequence in their heads, while holding their hands still and imagining how they would move their fingers. Subsequent scans of these volunteers showed the same result as for those who had played the sequence with fingers. The scientists’ conclusion: mental imagery may be just as good as actual practice”

Tammets goes on quoting what mental training athletes do to enhance their performances…but I already talked about it in this other article of mine…

I have read further and I have found the book to be quite interesting, so while waiting for a student of mine to show up, I found myself reading the first 76 pages…Great book! I am enjoying it very much!

And it gives even more fundation to the Speak Italian Magically approach;-)!

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What is spaced learning? Have you ever heard of it? Do you practice it? If your answer if no, what could it be? Whether you know spaced learning already or not, say or write the first things that come into your mind now.

Have you done it?

I think you already know that the brain learns in layers, that is why it is good to be exposed to the same input in different ways: from the big picture to the detail is usually best.   But what about revising the material? When should you revise it?

Now, I can tell you about spaced and my experience with it. I’ve always known that to make something stick in your long term memory you need to revise it and repeat it. But when? Let’s say that you listen to an episode of Speak Italian Magically, when should you revise it again?

A couple of years ago, when I first read  Tony Buzan’s books I discovered about spaced repetition.  Basically he talks about the five-times repetition formula. He says that you should revise:

- the first time within an hour or so you’ve first read or learnt something;

- the second time the day after;

- the third time about a week later;

- the fourth one month later and

- the fifth and final six months later.

Based on this, if you listen and understand the first episode of Speak Italian Magically now at 10.36 a.m, you should:

- revise it within an hour today, 16 November 2010, that is 11.36 a.m.

- revise it tomorrow, 17 November 2010;

- revise it next week, 23 November 2010;

- revise it next month, 16 December;

- revise it after  6 months, 16 May 2011!

Leggi il resto di questo articolo »

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Do you want to learn a language? Do you want to learn Italian? Why don’t you do it in your mind?

Wait..what is this saying? That you should only imagine to speak Italian in your mind?

Well, not only imagine.

Have you ever heard the sentence that says “the body won’t go where the mind has not gone first”?

No? What does that mean?

It literally means that  to create your future you need to create it in your mind first.

If you don’t believe that something is possible, then you won’t achieve it.

Is visualizing yourself being able to speak Italian fluently useful?

What do you think?

Beside the fact that visualizing yourself speaking Italian fluently is a boost for your motivation, it helps you believe that this is possible and real as well.

Today I was surfing the web to find more fundation to the approach I used on Speak Italian Magically and I came across to this page:

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/12/091203132153.htm

In this article the researchers show that perceptual learning can also occur by mental imagery, i.e., in the absence of physical stimulation.
So, could visual imagery - or do you want to call it mental training? - be useful to learn Italian faster?
Yes, it will help you a lot.
As I also said in The science behind Speak Italian Magically, Vera F. Birkenbihl, famous European teacher and trainer, writes in her “Stroh im Kopf?” [“Straw in the head?”] book that if you want to learn to do something (i.e.: speak Italian), you have to realize that DOING it means double duty for your brain. Part of the brain is busy learning to speak Italian by building the neural highway while another part of the brain actually has to coordinate your muscles in your tongue and mouth to perform the task. And that requires resources and energy.She actually suggests to conserve energy and learning time. You should work in small modules and switch back and forth between real action and mental rehearsal. This cuts learning time.

In my opinion, this is also why many language teaching approaches have a silent period, when students don’t actively speak. It is the phase when they need to get input, as much input as possible.

If you want to know more about the Speak Italian Magically approach, download the free excerpt on your ebook reader.

Go to http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/20733 

Do you have a Kindle? Go here: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B003XYFPFK 

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