The Roman Teacher

Ciao! I have been teaching Italian for the past ten years. I have taught privately and at language schools like La Scuola Italiana del Greenwich Village in New York and ItalCultura, the school of the Italian Cultural Institute of Chicago. During the first few lessons I will make sure you have the tools to pronounce and identify all the sounds of the Italian language. This step is essential! And it will make everything easier afterwards. When I teach Italian I try to avoid all the things that I hated as a language student. We will use real songs, real literature, do real conversation and storytelling. When you are engaging all your senses it is easier to keep your mind relaxed and to remember new words.

I will customize my materials to your interests, needs and desired pace. And because you are learning from a native Italian you will also learn about Italian culture and history. You will absorb a way of thinking, not just grammar rules.

I speak a bunch of languages so I know a thing or two about how tedious language classes can be. My terrifying French teacher in middle school made us repeat the same fake dialogue from a really bad book ad nauseam, over and over and over again. Some of those dialogues are carved in my brain: “Bonjour, je m’appelle Richard Drapeau, je viens du Canada, je suis Canadien...”

When I teach Italian I try to avoid all the things that I hated as a language student. We will use real songs, real literature, do real conversation and storytelling and we will go on “talking walks” because when you are engaging all your senses it is easier to keep your mind relaxed and to remember new words.

I hold a degree in Lingue e Letterature Straniere (Foreign Languages and Literatures) from Università Roma Tre (equivalent to an American MA) and a Master’s of Fine Arts in Interdisciplinary Arts and Media from Columbia College Chicago. I wrote a thesis about translating a long epic poem by W. H. Auden and I tried to ride a horse across America.

Teaching a language is a very big project :) But I love teaching the sounds of Italian. It's always very rewarding to see how quickly my students get used to producing new sounds. My newest student, Alexander, learned the "gli" sound in just a few minutes! Afterwards he had a very proud expression on his face.