Fluency Classes
We talk a lot here during our Fluency classes… in Italian of course… ONLY in italiano!
When we study grammar rules in the grammar book they seem clear enough, but to implement them FLUENTLY in a real conversational context, is another story. This is why Fluency classes are so useful. Here some practical examples. When we go to buy some clothes we ask simple questions such as ‘how do I look?’ or ‘do I look OK?’ or ‘do I look smart?’. Trust me that if we translated these expressions into Italian… they wouldn’t make any sense! Therefore, in our Fluency Classes we are learning the Italian ways to say the same things and… at the start these don’t sound familiar to English speaker’s ears, but through using them in fun activities, real life situations, role playing and listening to Italian dialogues we get the hang of it.
In order to get the best out of our Fluency classes we use topics that are fun, useful and that allow us to talk about our interests, experiences or things that matter to us. Tasks are challenging in order to engage us but also practical and fun. In fact, it has been scientifically proven that we do our best and learn the most when we’re having fun. This is because cognition and emotion affect each other in the oldest part of our brain (the Amygdala). This part of our brain reacts to fear and happiness and this reaction strongly affects our ability to learn and memorise. On top of that, we shouldn’t forget that being in a good mood helps the production of ‘serotonin which plays an important role in learning, memorisation other important areas such as social abilities’ (‘Learning how to learn’ Dr. Barbara Oakley, University of California, San Diego).
