We are a small group, currently 5 people. We meet at Tesco's on 2 Thursdays in a month, in an upper room. One of our main activities is free conversation in Italian, so it helps to have some knowledge of Italian and a certain amount of confidence in your ability to use it. We also read books and articles in Italian, as a group, translating into English as we go, and listen to recordings of spoken Italian. However, we would have to admit that the texts are often those simplified for learners of the language and the recordings usually come from a site called News in Slow Italian.

New members with some existing knowledge of Italian are most welcome.

There is now also an Italian Learners' Group, see the relevant group page.

We have a collection of language learning CDs for members to borrow.

Here is a further list of online resources for learners of Italian.

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2026 ANNUAL REPORT   

Italian Group
I was asked to provide an annual report for both the Italian Conversation and Italian Beginners groups. It makes sense to combine them. You could view these as one group with two different types of meeting. However, one of these is based around conversation, which requires some knowledge of the language and, also, some confidence in using what you do know. The other one follows a formal course. That is more useful in the early stages. It also requires most of the group to be at a similar stage, in learning the language. Otherwise, some will get bored and some will get left behind. As a result, the membership of the two groups is fairly distinct. It only makes sense to attend both, when the learning group is already quite advanced.

Italian Conversation
The Italian Conversation group has also expanded quite significantly, from several different sources. We managed to convince most of the previous learners’ group, who had followed 3 course books over nearly 3 years, that they were probably good enough to try some conversation. We also picked up several members, who moved into the area, and a few others who were already here, but decided to join us. A few years ago, the conversation group was a handful of members. Now, we have a dozen active members on the mailing list. Of course, they don’t all turn up for every meeting, particularly at this time of year.
The conversation group meets on 2nd and 4th Thursday of the month in the Training Room on the 1st floor in Tesco on Thorpe Road. That’s usually the day after the beginners’ group, but occasionally it’s not. We usually manage about 1hr of conversation, mainly about what we have done since the last meeting. Occasionally, we throw in something about the state of the world or the process of learning a language. On a good day, we will have enough steam to fill an hour and a half.
However, we try to prepare a second activity to fill half and hour to 20mins. This might be very traditional, like reading and translating from a book or an article. Or we could agree to revise a particular area of grammar. However, a crossword in Italian can fill the slot, just as well. This encourages a different way of thinking about Italian words, and we don’t do the ones at the easiest level.

C. J. Rupp, Group Leader for Italian: italian@u3ameltonmowbray.org.uk