638 ratings
Italian nerd
Nicole A.
I get you speaking Italian in real sentences from the first session.
Education
UC San Diego
B.A. in Linguistics, minor in Italian Studies
Hometown
Sacramento, California
A note from Nicole
“Italian is made for speaking out loud, so that is where we start.”
I give you one useful pattern, you say it three ways about your own life, and I fix only what gets in the way of being understood. The grammar charts can wait; the rhythm can't. Most students who think they are bad at languages have never practiced somewhere mistakes were expected.
Nicole’s story
Nicole started at UC San Diego as a chemistry major and arrived in Bologna for a study-abroad year knowing one Italian sentence. She spent her mornings behind the counter of a pasticceria near Piazza Maggiore, where the owner corrected her verbs the way he corrected her pastry cream: once, firmly, and then he waited for her to try again. By spring she was taking orders without rehearsing them in her head, and she came home and switched her major to Linguistics with a minor in Italian Studies. She kept the habit of measuring exactly: her brown-butter croquembouche took Best in Show at the 2019 Sacramento County Fair, and she still explains passato prossimo against imperfetto with a recipe card.
What students say
4.9 ★ · 638 ratings
“My daughter had a 70 average in Italian III and froze every time her teacher called on her. Nicole had her describe her week in three sentences at the start of every session, then fixed just one thing. By the spring oral exam she spoke for four minutes without notes and finished the year with an A-.”
“I was leaving for a semester in Florence with two terms of college Italian and no confidence. Nicole ran every session as a real situation: renting a room, ordering at the bar, sorting out a delayed train. I tested into the intermediate track the week I arrived.”
“Passato prossimo against imperfetto had beaten me for a whole year. Nicole turned it into a recipe card: the steps you did, and what the kitchen was like while you did them. It finally stuck, and my last two quizzes were a 92 and a 96.”