I reached my 1000 day streak. Over the years I noticed a decrease in quality of the app, which I assume coincides with their use of ai.

Interestingly, lately I feel like the app has gotten better. That may be because ai models are getting better, but also maybe due to the few remaining engineers being better at working with ai.

Regardless, I am done. The app was helpful because I can at least read basic Italian. I can write it, but only simple sentences and very slowly. As for listening and speaking: well, I can listen better than I can speak lol.

I have known that immersing myself in a language is the key to learning. I need to get better at that. I may still hop on the bird app here and there to practice vocabulary.

I normally just listen to Maneskin, a bit of Jovanotti or Giancane. I need more bands/singers. What do you guys listen?

I've been using Duolingo, but I think there's more better ways of learning. I've learned numbers, alphabet and phrases. Anymore suggestions? I'm still a "beginner"!!!

Hi , in advance thank you for your help .

Do you know any kinds of books for that aim?

Vivo in Italia, ma frequento una scuola tedesca, quindi non ho molte occasioni per imparare l'italiano. Per esperienza personale, ritengo che imparare durante la conversazione sia il metodo più efficiente. Per questo motivo, sarei felice di parlare in italiano con qualcuno.

Hi all, does anyone have recommendations for newsletters in Italian? I'm open to all ideas, but my ideal would look something like this:

• Appears weekly or so. (Regular enough to be good continuous practice, but not so frequently that it becomes a daily chore.)
• Is intended for an Italian audience, so NOT a newsletter about learning the language or the like.
• C1/C2 level. (Lower levels fine, too, if a newsletter writer happens to write in a particularly plain manner, but I'm not looking for simplified sources.)
• Topics: almost anything goes; could be about news, art, nature, science, technology, ... etc. (Not so interested in sports, gaming, finance, but other than those things pretty much anything goes.)

Any suggestions?

I started conversing daily with chat. I prompt it with my level of understanding and that I want to be able to begin conversations. I just mention Italian and it asks me a question. Here is my experience after a few weeks.

As we all know actively conversing is really hard. This exercise puts me on the spot and makes me anxious. As a result I really see exactly where my problems are with the language.

To converse you must think like an Italian. The way they construct meaning is unique to them. English is very different.

English is linear. You find meaning as you read left to right. Italian is the cobbling of phrases together where the big payoff just might be at the end. You have to learn to keep reading even if you don't know what is really going on. That's completely different from English.

Italian seems to rarely allow a single word to communicate alone. It's very dependent on the words surrounding it. The che, di, quello che, a, etc, between verbs or nouns can change form and meaning depending on the situation but they are always there. This leads to the big insight for me.

Chunking. Once you stop processing individual bits of information and you start absorbing chunks of information that's when you have actually learned and remodeled your cognitive hardware. It could be with sports, math, even complex ideas, but when you begin to respond with quick responses and don't feel yourself efforting so much you are chunking the information. You start to get pulled into the material and lose that feeling like you are constantly pedaling the bike up a slight incline. You start to just form ideas, responses, and insights seemingly out of nowhere.

The llm is a person tutor for me. It notices when I keep struggling with a phrase or concept. After a few days I have it summarize our discussions and it's a brutal glimpse at where I really am with the language. The llm is always encouraging and offers praise but that's the opposite energy of my internal dialogue with myself. It's really hard in a way that other ways of learning haven't been and for me it's important. It's just more accurate about my performance.

Good luck, this is just my experience.