Monday 20 June 2011

End of Part One

My Italian classes came to an end on Friday - at least for this year. Having studied it before, I'd enrolled for the 'Post-Beginners' course, and after a moment of panic the first week when the other students recited from what I now realize was their (prepared) homework and I felt totally out of my depth, I in fact picked it up again really quickly and the tutor and my fellow-students seemed well impressed.

Looking back over the last year - well, nine months actually - one of the things that's really struck me was how much of my French surfaced again from my schooldays: sentence structures, grammar and vocabulary, long forgotten as I'd thought, suddenly reappearing as if it had been only yesterday. Probably a good thing, as the two languages are very similar and I must say I found it a useful clue on many occasions remembering back to how I was taught to say something in French and working from that to find the Italian equivalent instead of trying to "translate" direct from English.

Although I haven't *yet* got a qualification from it, the standard we've reached now from what I can make out is roughly equivalent to a basic GCSE. There's a series of higher-level courses, the first of which will be a 'Lower Intermediate' starting next year, and we're hoping to keep the same day/time slot which will be ideal for me, and nice too as the class has tended "gel" as a group. I've just got to keep practising over the long summer holiday so that I don't go and forget it all again!

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