7 Terrific Ways to Practice Your Italian Listening Skills

Italian is a Romance language is spoken mainly in Italy, Switzerland, San Marino, Vatican City, Slovenia and Croatia. In Switzerland, it is spoken in Graubünden and Ticino cantons in the southeast. In Croatia, it is spoken mainly in Istria County in the northwest, and it is spoken in the neighbouring Istria region of southwest Slovenia. There are also Italian speakers in other countries, including Malta, Monaco, Romania, France, Eritrea, Somalia, Brazil Australia and the USA. There are about 64 million native speakers of Italian worldwide, another 3 million people speak it as a second language.

In Italy, in 2012 about 59 million people spoke Italian. Half the population speak standard Italian as a native language, and the other half speak regional dialects and languages as their first language and Italian as a second language. Italian first started to appear in written documents during the 10th century in the form of notes and short texts inserted into Latin documents such as lawsuits and poetry. For a long time, there was no standard written or spoken language in Italy and writers tended to write in their own regional dialects and languages. In northern Italy, which was often ruled by the French, French and Occitan were used as literary languages.

1. Active Listening: You can Improve your Italian listening skills dramatically by active listening. Listening to Italian songs can be an enjoyable pastime, but you don’t internalize the new combinations of words until you listen to it actively. You can listen to the song and read the lyrics. Nice…and boring. The most fun and productive approach is to fill the gaps with the missing words in the lyrics. That’s a killer method, that other than helping you reinforce your Italian grammar and learn new expressions, it will help you better your ability to recognize sounds.
2. Sing-Along: Pronunciation and enunciation of each syllable is quite important in Italian music, so songs can be a great way to hear words as they’re meant to be spoken. To make things even better, Italy has a rich musical culture, so you’re guaranteed to find something you can tap your foot to sooner or later. tend to run together and things get a bit messy. In Italian, this isn’t the case. Italian is loved around the world for its musical lilts and hooks, so why not do what native Italians do best to improve your skills? Sing!
3. Practice pronunciation: Listen to native speakers as much as possible, and take note of how words and sounds can blend, morph, or get dropped in rapid speech.  A good accent will give you the ability to hear and pick out the otherwise unnatural new sounds. To develop your accent, focus on any sounds or letters that feel difficult or unnatural for you. Once you get more comfortable with the basic sounds, start to combine them using words and whole sentences. 
4. Make listening part of your routine: Now that you’ve started practising active listening and pronunciation, make it a part of your regular learning. Allot a specific amount of time for each of your listening activities. Now, you don’t have to use this schedule exactly. Tailor it to your own needs and availability. The point is that you should make a conscious and decisive effort to practice your listening skills on a regular basis. It could be 30 minutes a day or it might be 10. What matters most is that you practice consistently.
5. Italian Podcasts: Using Italian Podcasts is the best way to get acquainted with the real language and catapult you towards Italian fluency. If you don’t have yet a level allowing you to seize an entire conversation, I recommend you to use yabla.com or ItalianPod101, where you can find plenty of beginner dialogues with transcription and translation, grammar explanations and the option to slow down the pace of the audio.
6. Watch YouTube videos: YouTube also has some fantastic resources for learning Italian. We love the way you can see, as well as listen to, Italians speaking their language. Getting your accent right has just as much to do with how you use your mouth as the sounds that come out of it. Also, don’t forget the hand gestures are an important part of communicating in Italian. The challenge with YouTube videos for us is that the videos are rarely structured or organized in a way that is easy to follow and learn from.
7. Label your home or office: Do you want to get organized and practise your Italian skills at the same time? Put Italian labels on the things you regularly use. Use masking tape or post-it notes to label as many items as possible, and before you know it your vocabulary will be better than ever! This is an excellent way to make learning Italian a part of your everyday life.

Try to practice daily, if even it’s for just a few minutes, and remember that Rome wasn’t built in a day!