THE IMPORTANCE OF REPETITION WHEN LEARNING TO SPEAK A FOREIGN LANGUAGE.

This is an AI-generated image. My contents never are.

If you are studying Italian--or any foreign language for that matter--there is one thing you are not doing: you are not including repetition as possibly the most important piece of your practice routines.

Let me guess. You use pen and paper a lot when you practice, don't you? You work a lot on grammar and spend most your time on fill-in-the-gaps written exercises, is that right? If you read anything, you always or mostly read mentally, with the exception of few words here and there, yes? You never, ever practice aloud, do you?

If this is you--and I know it is--you're missing out on an opportunity to speak better, faster, and more fluently.

Do not get me wrong, grammar is important, and so are grammar books, fill-in-the-gaps exercises, taking notes with a pen, etc. However, let me ask you a question: do you really need a teacher to do all that? Do you really need to pay someone to tell you "open the book at page 122" to then go on reading word after word of whatever grammar rule you are working on together? Do you really need a teacher to download and hand out a few pdf files from the internet and spend two hours on poorly conceived exercises and unrealistic sentences?

As a professional language coach, I can confirm the shocking and destabilizing answer to the latter question is a resounding "NO".

YOUR MAIN REASON FOR STUDYING A LANGUAGE IS YOU WANT TO SPEAK IT

That does not take anything away from the importance of writing, reading, listening, and of course grammar. A language has indeed to be tackled on a 360-degree scale. However, learners and teachers only work our a small part of that scale. They completely ignore the speaking part (the listening part too, but we'll deal with that in a different article).

Have you ever seen Mike Tyson perform pirouettes to improve his southpaw mechanics? Or Pavarotti stretch his calf muscles in hope to make his high C's more consistent? Or guitarist Matteo Mancuso put more time on solfège to speed up his fretting fingers?

No, because if you want to perfect your hooks, you need to practice hooks. To make your high C's more consistent, you need to work out your high C's. To speed up your fretting fingers, you need to pick up a guitar and let your fingers do the work.

Likewise, if you want to improve your speaking skills, you need to speak, or practice specifically for that.

Repetition is the only thing that can help you inlay the mental and physical speech mechanics in your body/brain.

HERE'S AN EXAMPLE OF REPETITION DRILL YOU CAN DO BY YOURSELF

"Se"+ time reference + congiuntivo imperfetto + present conditional + rest of the sentence.

What you need:

1) The structure above.

2) A stopwatch.

3) Ten minutes a day.

The idea is to make different sentences using the same core structure over and over again.

Instructions:

1) Say all sentences aloud.

2) For 2 minutes of your stopwatch, say sentences back to back right off the top of your head with breaks in between sentences as short as possible. When the 2 minutes is up, take a 30-second break, then do 2 more minutes. If you do this in the morning, repeat in the afternoon/evening. Keep on with this drill for three days.

3) Make all the sentences about yourself for now.

4) Stick to simple sentences.

5) Model your sentences after the samples below.

E.g.

Se mia madre venisse a New York, (io) sarei molto contento.

E.g.

Se vincessi la lotteria, (io) farei un lungo viaggio.

E.g.

Se incontrassi un cantante famoso, (io) gli chiederei un autografo.

E.g.

Se non bevessi un caffè la mattina, (io) sarei molto nervoso.

ALWAYS HAVE A CLEAR AND EASILY STATEABLE OBJECTIVE

Before starting any drill or exercise, ask yourself, "What am I trying to get out of this?"

Answers should be of the type, "I am going to memorize the imperfect subjunctive to perfection," or "I am going to understand how reflexive verbs work," or "I am going to get used to using this idiom in sentences," etc.

For the kind of repetition-based drill above, you should aim for nothing less than absolute comfort in using that structure in sentences.

"Comfort" means:

1) being able to use this structure automatically, without thinking, and as a result of pure automatism, and correctly.

2) using this structure in sentences and conversation without much strain, tension, stress, anxiety, doubt, or hesitation.

All the latter qualities are key components of the umbrella term "fluency".

Yes, though you need to be realistic about the kind of work involved (structured, consistent, and of short intensity), you should aim for nothing short of fluency. Only through repetition can you learn to speak a foreign language with a satisfying degree of fluency.