Italian course (50 lessons)

Read Italian aloud — almost as it's spelled. Hard vs soft c/g, double consonants, the rolled r

Tell masculine from feminine nouns; build the plural

Meet the articles (English doesn't have masculine/feminine ones) and their prepositional contractions

Verb essere: "I'm a teacher", "I'm from Boston". The subject pronoun is usually dropped — the ending already shows the person

Verb avere and the "I HAVE hunger / thirst / cold / X years" idioms; c'è / ci sono (there is / there are)

Describe with adjectives — agreement in gender and number, usually after the noun (unlike English)

Conjugate regular -ARE verbs (parlare, lavorare, mangiare) — 80% of Italian verbs

Conjugate -ERE and -IRE verbs; the key irregulars fare, andare, venire, stare, dare, dire

Negate and ask questions (by intonation and with question words)

Connected text in the present — no new grammar, consolidation

"I can / want / must" — modal verbs potere, volere, dovere

"My book" / "this, that" — possessives and demonstratives; family-noun exception (mio padre — no article)

"I see her", "I call them" — direct-object pronouns mi, ti, lo/la, ci, vi, li/le

"I tell him", "I give her" — indirect-object pronouns mi, ti, gli/le

"I'm going there", "I have three of them" — ci and ne (no clean English equivalent)

Reflexive verbs: "I get up, wash myself, am called…" (alzarsi, lavarsi, chiamarsi)

"I gave it to him" — combining two pronouns in one sentence

"I like it" — piacere with its inverted construction; same shape for servire, mancare, bastare

"Right now I'm reading" — sto leggendo, present continuous

Connected portrait of daily life — no new grammar

"I ate / bought / did" — talk about the past with avere + participle

"She left, we arrived" — same kind of past, but with essere; the participle agrees with the subject

"When I was a kid…" — durative and background past (imperfetto)

Choose which past to use — event vs background; mentre, quando

"I will go, do" — simple future; also for inference ("It must be eight")

"I'd like a coffee" — conditional for politeness, hypothesis, soft advice

"When I arrived, he had already left" — an action before another past

"I would have done it if I'd known" / "he said he would come" — compound future and conditional

Stitch sentences together: che, cui, dove, il quale

Connected multi-paragraph text across several tenses — no new grammar

Subjunctive forms — built off the io form of the present; key irregulars (sia, abbia, faccia, vada, possa)

"I want him to come", "you need him to know", "I'm glad he came" — subjunctive after will and emotion

"I doubt that…", "I'm looking for someone who can…" — after doubt, opinion, indefinite antecedent

"Before", "so that", "although" — conjunctions that demand the subjunctive

Commands and requests; the formal "you" (Lei) is actually the same form as the subjunctive

"If I had time, I'd go" — irreal condition

"If I had known, I would have come" — irreal past

Sequence-of-tenses inside the subjunctive — what follows what

"It was done", "people eat well here" — passive and impersonal si

Build long, complex sentences — no new grammar

Periphrastic constructions for aspect: stare per (about to), cominciare a, smettere di, continuare a

Passato remoto — the literary and southern simple past. Learn to recognise, not produce

Connectors for long talk and essay: poiché, quindi, sebbene, tuttavia, innanzitutto

Recognise idioms and figurative expressions and use them in fitting situations

Switch register: formal / neutral / colloquial

Build words: -ino (small), -one (big), -accio (bad), -zione (action)

Which words go together: prendere una decisione, fare una domanda — that's what makes you "sound Italian"

Understand live speech: allora, insomma, magari, mica, dai, beh

Regional variants (north / centre / south); the language of news, business, digital communication

Final — what you can do now and how to push from B2 to C1