Italian course in Florence?

November 26, 2006 10:14 AM

Recommendations for an intensive, short-term Italian language course in Florence?
posted by walla to travel & transportation (8 comments total)

If you motherlanguage is english I would highly recommend you first start from a local school and get a decent command of the grammar which is a LOT more complicated than english one.

After doing this, visiting Florence would start making some sense as you would already would have developed some skill ; before that, it just like trying to learn spanish when listening to spanish people talking at their usual 6999 words per minute, it's useless, Imho (and I am italian so and english is relaxatingly easy, even if a good command of english does require some intensive prolonged efforts)
posted by elpapacito at 11:08 AM on November 26, 2006

Thanks, elpapacito, but I'm already in Florence! I speak Spanish, so I think the grammar will probably won't be all that terrible to learn.
posted by walla at 11:33 AM on November 26, 2006

Oh well then I would suggest you a good bilingual university student attending "lettere" or "lingue" ; it is probably less expensive then any "course" you could ever buy and probably A LOT better and you can also choose not to continue lessons with a person that doesn't meet your desires.

I wouldn't recommend any particular school, because my experience with english schools is rather negative, they usually steal money and leave you with the impression you have learned something, while you probably just learned what a k12 student knows.
posted by elpapacito at 11:59 AM on November 26, 2006

Ops forgot..you may want to try at local university and seek for Faculty of Languages (more likely then Faculty of Letters) , ask around the officies or the student places.
posted by elpapacito at 12:00 PM on November 26, 2006

International House Milan ([e-mail]) is excellent. Call them and ask if they know a good school in Florence:

ph +39 02.86457408
fax [phone]
posted by matteo at 3:09 PM on November 26, 2006

I've done this myself. I did a four-week course at the British Institute in Florence doing language classes and art history. This was a few years ago. My father went 1.5 years ago and chose to do just art history classes there. He found the school to be quite disorganised. When I went it was fine and I learnt what I needed. However the next year I went to the Università per Stranieri in Perugia to do a one-month intensive course and learnt so much more. This is a university just for foreigners and was founded by Mussolini! The level of teaching is fantastic and we had some excellent guest lecturers from Rome University. If you could stay in Perugia for a month I would really try to organise it. (I got a short-term let from the local newspaper and it was cheap. My friend who went said the university hands out scholarships to lots of people.) If not, join a class in Florence with foreigners from different countries not just native English speakers. When I was in Florence I learnt Italian during the class but then spoke English in the breaks and after school. In Perugia I was forced to speak Italian all the time in order to communicate with my classmates. I'd try the Società Dante Alighieri as this is the official Italian organisation for promoting Italian to foreigners.
posted by boudicca at 2:38 AM on November 27, 2006

I went to Scuola Leonardo da Vinci for two weeks in 2002 and learned a lot. It was pretty fun as well. My only reservation in recommending it is that it's the only thing of its kind that I've done so I don't really have any standard to compare it to.

They give you a test when you go in to find the best level for you, I already knew basic pronunciation and grammar rules and a bit of vocabulary so I skipped the first stage.
posted by teleskiving at 6:52 AM on November 27, 2006

Sorry for the delay in responding, but thanks for all the suggestions! I will definitely look into these.
posted by walla at 8:26 AM on December 2, 2006