— Aldous Huxley, From “Brave New World.”

@academia-lucifer

Does she fancy me?

Or is she just being friendly?

My favourite game

Dragon has achieved zero-g!

Just trying to draw anything 

Call Me by Your Name (2017) dir. Luca Guadagnino

Hey, how do you learn Italian? what textbooks and apps do you use? Can you give any tips for someone who is just starting out? Thanks in advance?

Hi!! Thank you for your question. 

Here is a rough plan I made when I started this blog, which is July 2017. It contains a list of resources I was using at the time. I don’t have access to my Schaum’s vocabulary book at the moment, but I’ll be resuming it when I get home. I would definitely recommend it if you’re an intermediate learner like me.

Other resources I’ve used consistently over the past few months are:

this website for free ebooks

this website for free audiobooks

raiplay for series and films (I also watched Suburra on Netflix, it’s brilliant and you should go watch it right now)

Eduopen.org and federica.eu are two websites that contain MOOCs in Italian, if you’re into that

You could also consider getting the raiplay radio app on your phone to listen to the radio, podcasts, and audiobooks. Note that not all of their content is available outside Italy. 

My routine is now doing a MOOC class (making notes and looking up new vocabulary) in the evening, or going on tandem and chatting to people, because I really have to focus on university studies. (I 100% recommend getting tandem on your phone. It’s free and really fun)

Before that, I used to read a lot of articles on La Repubblica  - just pick a section that interests you. I liked reading outloud to practice speaking, and it also made me focus on the text more. At the end you could make a list of words you don’t know. I also used to watch Cucine da Incubo (the Italian version of Kitchen Nightmares) and the dubbed version of The Nanny, there are lots of other fun programmes available on youtube so just look for something you find interesting. That way you won’t feel bad about procrastinating.. because you’ll be doing it in Italian!

Here are some other useful posts with resources (links included)

radio stations

podcasts

movies and series

a masterlist of italian resources

My tips for someone who is just starting out would be:

Do something every day. Or every other day, if you have little time. This is a lot better than just doing a lot on one day and then doing nothing for the next week or two, or three… your brain won’t retain new information if you don’t practice 

Make it fun and varied. I don’t use apps like memrise, duolingo, etc for any of my target languages because I find them very boring and repetitive. Find a routine that works for you.

If you are a complete beginner, take your time to understand the grammar. Verb drills, gender agreement, articles, and the like. Find a grammar book you like and stick to it. You could look up exercises online to complement it. 

Again, if you’re a complete beginner, start by listening to Disney songs! Look up the lyrics, print them out or write them down if you like, highlight new words, try to translate the lyrics line by line, and/or learn the songs by heart. When you’re a bit more confident in the language, find artists in genres you like and listen to them, and do the same. I listen to a lot of rap music, for example. I look up the lyrics on rapgenius and try to follow them and understand what they mean.

I know I’ve said this before, but go on tandem. Try to have a conversation, even a very simple one. Ask your language partner to correct you if you make a mistake.

Good luck!!! If anyone else has tips or resources for beginners, it would be lovely if you added them to this post!

how does it feel being

Being feels okay most of the time. Sometimes it's overwhelming and I plunge into philosophical ponders about existing and not existing, but mostly I think it beats the alternatives.

Two mini serene scenes for the weekend. I am deeply tired, and it has been a very, very long term (I know, a long year). I have one more week of work this year, so just trying to de-stress and make a list of everything I need to do so I can take time off with a clear head 🕯✨

As someone who spends a *lot* of time online, especially with the current half-online schooling system my school uses, I thought it would be helpful to share some apps, websites and extensions that make my learning experience a lot easier! I’ve seen a lot of master posts like this by other studyblrs, but I often get overwhelmed by the many options they recommend for each function; so I thought I’d share the ones that I find work the best for me :)

desktop apps

Spotify - for music & podcasts

Drawboard PDF - helpful for annotating and reading PDFs!

Grammarly - great for correcting English grammar!

Virtual Cottage - very cute lil productivity tracker; plays lofi & rain sounds, kind of like forest but cuter! Has a full-screen option.

Discord - ok this isn’t a study app, but given that we’re at home a lot of clubs at my school use servers on Discord to organize & hold meetings!

websites

sleep calculator - helps you figure out when you should go to bed

CBC Gem - has a ton of free Shakespeare performances in full HD

duolingo - free language-learning website! 

conjugemos - Literal life-saver for learning Spanish grammar

wordreference - Great language dictionary/conjugation resource

unsplash - free HD pictures

free harvard courses - what it says on the tin!

chrome extensions

coffeelings - basically a “pixel a day” bujo page that you don’t have to draw out by hand!

smallPDF - file conversion & compression

Forest - productivity

Reading List - helps you bookmark webpages & articles to read later

LanguageTool - grammar and language correction in multiple languages

Grammarly - grammar and language correction

MyBib - citation generator

PrintWhatYouLike - print the content of a webpage w/o ads

SleepMode - set your webpage to close at a certain time

Outliner -  simplified, clean outlines & annotation features

WHA New Tab - clean new tab page with clock/quotes