My Skype Italian Lesson

Skype lessons - what's that all about?

Earlier this year, I decided to start taking Italian lessons. I have done an Italian course in the past, but it was a long time ago and I have forgotten a lot of the vocabulary and all the grammar rules. I asked around and found someone I judged to be the best Italian teacher in my city, Olja Andric. She has her own blog, and to me that says a lot . It turned out also that this teacher does something called Skype lessons! Shortly after, I learned my younger sister (also an English teacher) had been taking lessons from the same teacher and she was doing it on Skype. “What are these Skype lessons” I wondered, “and are others really doing that?” My sister told me it was not really much different than an ordinary lesson “in real life”, but I admit I was baffled. And interested! So, I contacted the Italian teacher and we agreed to have our first Skype Italian lesson 

It was 10 pm, quite late but it was actually the only time I was free. I was pretty tired and very happy about
the fact that I didn’t need to leave my room in order to do the lesson. I didn’t have the energy to go downstairs to the study so I just decided to have the lesson sitting on my bed. To my surprise, the Skype lesson did NOT involve video! This makes the connection far better and makes you all the more focused on the language itself. Plus: you don’t need to clean your room AND you can be in your pajamas the whole time.

The teacher called me, and from the moment I accepted the Skype call it was as if I was teleported to Italy. I loved the feeling! We spoke in Italian, talked about my background and my reasons for learning Italian and I was even asked to describe things like my room and my neighbourhood. After a while I glanced at my computer clock and realized it had been 30 minutes since we started talking! It was an amazing feeling to know I had been carrying out a conversation solely in Italian (making terrible mistakes of course, but who cares! We know Napoleon didn't!) and all that from the comfort of my own bedroom. It was an introductory lesson and after a bit of conversation we went through some PDF files and made a decision about the literature to use for the course. I had my notebook with me when I needed to write something down but a lot of the time I actually had my eyes closed, focusing very intensely on everything my teacher was saying, with a headset on my head, and letting my teacher, with the help of Skype guide me through one of the most enjoyable of life’s adventures - learning a foreign language. 

 At the moment, I am doing a course in Oxford, and I’ll be staying in England for the next 2 weeks– but thanks to the concept of Skype lessons I will have a chance to have lessons even when I’m a long way away from my teacher. And, since a lot of my own students are becoming interested in this, I am now looking forward to teaching through Skype too. Let me know what your experiences are like. Have you had Skype lessons? What are your thoughts on the idea?

Greetings from Oxford, I will write more about my time here at the Oxford Teaching Academy once I have more time,

Jasmina