Method

Every Self-Study lesson is divided into 5 steps to activate all your senses:

Listen and Speak (hear, speak, "taste") = you are immediately exposed to the Italian language by listening to a dialogue, and by recording your voice as you speak. As you pronounce the Italian words, you feel the movement of your tongue and "taste" the new sounds, while you start acquiring the Italian language structures.

Learn the Culture (hear, touch) = keep on practicing your listening skills, listen to the audio pronounced by professional actors, learn about Italian habits and culture, and use your pen and paper to write and complete a cloze test.

Discover the Grammar (see) = read and discover how the language and its structures work through grammatical explanations and charts.

Exercise (see, speak) = read, speak, practice and make the grammar alive as you put the language into use with exercises and exams. No need to write to fill in the exercises, just speak! Acquire the language structures and verify the results in your progress report.

Have fun and Reinforce (smell, taste, hear, see, touch) = reinforce what you have learned, and practice with activities that involve all your senses.

In the Beginner level, you meet Pinocchio (Pino for friends) and you start to get involved with the Italian language, culture and life-style.
You follow Pino as he realizes that his good friends, the Cat and the Fox, are not very good friends. But what is friendship after all? You will learn how to introduce yourself and your family members, express opinions, describe objects, places or situations, order at the restaurant, prepare a famous Italian dessert (Tiramisù), ask for directions, make a phone call, book a hotel room, go shopping, use the past simple, sing in Italian and much more.

In the Intermediate level you follow Pino and his conscience Grillo Parlante (Talking Cricket) as they travel around Italy, meet very famous Italian people (Fellini, Rossini, Michelangelo, Leonardo...) and ask them what friendship is. You will learn more about the Italian culture and you will become familiar with Italian topics such as opera, art, cinema and others. You will learn how to express your opinions better, how to understand more complex sentences, make comparisons, narrate, write a letter, use the future tense and much more.

In the Advanced level, you follow Pino as he wants to grow up and become rich and famous, even though he doesn't know what to do in life. But what is life after all? You follow Pino in his job search, where he meets other very famous Italian people (Dante, Ferrari, Galileo...) and asks them how to find a good job and how to become rich, famous and happy. You will learn more and more about the Italian culture through authentic material. You will learn how to write your resume, how to express hypotheses, how to perfect and maintain the language, how to use the subjunctive and much more.

The CyberItalian Method is based on a program developed in 1992 by Maura Garau (CyberItalian co-Founder) for the UNSRC "Circolo Culturale Italiano" at the United Nations in New York.

The aim of the CyberItalian Method is to provide students with the tools to both learn the language and learn how to learn it, so they quickly become independent in discovering the mechanisms of the language and deciding how to study and practice. Some students prefer a playful and communicative approach, others prefer a rational, analytical and grammatical approach: our method includes all these aspects.

Scientific research shows How Humans Communicate Through Sound. This kind of study led us to emphasize - throughout the entire course - the importance of listening to the sound of the Italian words and sentences, and of using the sounds (speaking) in order to fill in the exercises.
In each lesson's Dialogue, you get immersed in the sound of the language. You can listen and record your voice as you repeat the Italian words and sentences. In each Cultural Tidbit you listen to the audio and insert the words missing from the audio transcript. In specific Activities, you listen to songs and sing. Most exercises can be completed by speaking instead of writing. Finally, you become aware of the difference between listening to a recorded audio - that you can replay, slow down and hear many times - and a streaming audio or real time conversation - that you hear only one time and where you cannot control the speed (this practice trains the ear and improves listening and pronunciation skills).

Scientific research shows that handwriting helps memorization. This kind of study led us to develop educational activities that also require body involvement: handwriting, crafting, doing gymnastics, cooking, singing.

Scientific research shows that understanding the structures of a foreign language helps learning and acquisition. This kind of study led us to create the Dialogue area where students listen to the audios, read the transcripts and then analyze the sentence structures in the Grammar area.

Scientific research shows the Role of Personal Values in Learning Approaches and Student Achievements. This kind of study led us to include in the course also art and humanistic topics, to stimulate reflections on personal life and values and improve learning and acquisition. E.g. during the beginner level, Pinocchio realizes that his good friends, "il Gatto e la Volpe", (the Cat and the Fox), are not very good friends. But what is friendship?

Scientific research shows Specialized Memory Systems for Learning Spoken Words. This kind of study led us to create Exercises where students have to dictate or handwrite or type words/sentence, instead of just selecting the correct option by pressing one button.

Scientific research shows The Hebb Repetition Effect as a Laboratory Analogue of Language Acquisition. This kind of study led us to create the Dialogue area where students listen to audios and record their voice, as many times as they want, and the Exercise pages where students can check the solution and rewrite the exercises as many times as they want.