[originaltext]W: Hello, Professor Kristiva. My name is Albert Humphries, and I

W: Hello, Professor Kristiva. My name is Albert Humphries, and I live in London.
M: Miss Humphries. What is your question?
W: I’ve been studying Italian for some years. But I find it very difficult to speak, and when I went to Milan this summer, I couldn’t understand the Italian people at all. I got really disheartened.
M: How long have you been studying Italian?
W: About four years. I’ve been going to an evening class and I’ve watched BBC.
M: Did you buy the BBC hook?
W: No, we use a different book in the class.
M: Yes, I see, Miss Humphries, I always think that learning a language is rather like learning to drive. Now, you couldn’t learn to drive a car by sitting in a classroom or watching television. I think what you need is a lot of practice in using the language.
W: That’s all very well if you live in Italy.
M: Yes, I understand the problem. You might arrange with another student or students to have regular conversation practice.
W: But the other students make the same mistakes as I do.
M: I think you’re confusing learning with practicing. Learning to speak means being able to put together the right groups of words and to say them in a reasonably accurate way.
W: And what about learning to understand real Italian?
M: Well, again, you need practice in hearing the Italian language spoken by Italian speakers. Get one of them to read Italian newspaper onto a cassette. Then you listen to the recording until you almost know them by heart. You don’t need a huge vocabulary. You need a small vocabulary that you can use really efficiently, and to be able to de that you need lots and lots of practice.