7 Superb Sites to Practice Italian Online and Click Your Way to Fluency
Ever wonder what the life of an astronaut is like?
Just try surfing the internet for language learning resources.
But we’re here to make this voyage a bit easier, no matter what your Italian proficiency level is or your specific language goals are.
With these seven reliable, varied websites in your bookmarks bar, you’ll be able to easily and effectively practice Italian online.
Ready to blast off?
Contents
- Why Should You Practice Italian Online?
- 7 Superb Sites to Practice Italian Online and Click Your Way to Fluency
Download: This blog post is available as a convenient and portable PDF that you can take anywhere. Click here to get a copy. (Download)
Why Should You Practice Italian Online?
As noted above, there’s an incredible number of Italian practice resources available online. You might already use the most popular ones: Italian learning apps that have turned the language acquisition experience into a game. Learning and practicing your Italian skills online is a fantastic way to reap all the benefits of the internet!
Here are some solid reasons for logging on and settling down to study on the world wide web:
- You can do it from anywhere. It used to be that you had to meet in a specific place for language instruction, find books in the library to answer a simple question or travel to an Italian-speaking community to practice your skills. Now, all of this practice is a swipe or a click away!
- It lets you focus on specific language skills. Online access to all these resources also means you can practice multiple language learning skills at a time. You’ll have easy access to practice materials for listening to Italian, perfecting your Italian verbal skills, reading and writing, as well as comprehensive resources for targeting all of the above.
- It’s flexible. The internet isn’t tied to a schedule. You can spend hours practicing Italian or just a few minutes at a time while you’re commuting, eating or waiting at the dentist’s office. You can do this at all hours of the day or night (shout out to my fellow night owls!).
- There are constantly new resources being added! Perhaps best of all, however, is that the internet is always evolving. Innovation is the internet’s strength, always giving us new resources and products that make our lives easier.
As you can guess, this innovation greatly benefits language learners, as new Italian resources are added all the time!
7 Superb Sites to Practice Italian Online and Click Your Way to Fluency
Let’s boot up the Wi-Fi and take a look at the top seven places on the internet where you can practice your Italian skills!
Digital Dialects
Digital Dialects is a website that has games and quizzes for practicing dozens of languages, including Italian. The games are aimed at beginner to early-intermediate learners, and the interface almost has a retro video game look to it. Prepare to practice Italian in the 80s!
The Italian games on Digital Dialects include primarily matching and flashcard-based exercises. The exercises cover topics such as numbers, animals, colors and food, so it’s perfect for getting acquainted with the basic nouns you’ll need to navigate the world in Italian.
To play the games, you must first choose a topic. Next, you get an opportunity to review the topic’s material (generally a list of vocabulary words). Lastly, you can choose the game you want to play. The game uses the words of the topic that you chose, so make sure to pay particular attention to the topic’s review list!
FluentU
FluentU is an immersive program that makes it possible to learn Italian naturally with authentic videos. Brush up on how to use a specific verb with a game show, discover new vocabulary related to your hobby in a vlog or get intensive with a tense in a music video.
Each video comes with interactive subtitles: Hover your mouse over a word to see an in-context definition, or click on it to view the pronunciation, more video example sentences and an image.
You’ll also see the grammar information for each word as it’s being used in that particular sentence. Plus, definitions are contextual so you know you’re getting the right meaning for that instance of the word. Come across a new word? Add it to your flashcards to review later.
Each video is also followed by a tailor-made quiz to test your understanding of the language from the video, as well as give you a chance to translate key moments.
Further exercises are available for the flashcard decks you make. These are adaptive—they ask more often about words you’re struggling with and review known words at optimized intervals—and give you a chance to select, type and speak your answers.
Organize the videos by skill level, topic and format to find content that’s engaging and relevant to you.
You can use FluentU in your browser, or download the iOS or Android app.
ielanguages
This resource is a great place to practice Italian aimed at beginner and early-intermediate learners.
Here you’ll find a comprehensive Italian grammar and vocabulary tutorial, with nearly 200 downloadable pages of lessons plus three hours of audio recorded by native speakers. It’s an awesome resource for mastering the foundations and getting ready for real-world conversations.
On top of the Italian tutorial, ielanguages also offers dozens of online flashcard, matching and fill-in-the-blank exercises to help you practice core Italian words and phrases.
While pretty basic in their set-up, the exercises are effective for learning essential everyday vocabulary. Topics include days of the week, family vocabulary and even verb conjugations.
This means you can master basic greetings and even prepare for communicating in common situations like eating at an Italian restaurant or traveling through an Italian train station.
Further, many of the flashcard exercises also come with an audio file. This is perfect for pronunciation practice and for acquiring that awesome Italian accent.
Learn Italian
If you liked Digital Dialects Italian, then you’ll also like the game-focused Learn Italian. Like Digital Dialects, this website uses games to help you practice Italian online.
First, Learn Italian lets you choose a topic. There are dozens to choose from, so pick one that relates to what you’re currently learning or want to learn. Next, you get to review a short tutorial on said topic. Then, you choose a game to practice that topic.
Topics include basic subject matter such as animals, colors, the world and even grammar.
What makes this resource unique is the sheer number of games you can play: there are six of them for each topic. The games include Hangman, Pelmanism (a card matching game), The Frog Flies (help the frog catch flies while you learn vocabulary) and Sow Grow (use Italian vocabulary to help grow flowers).
Because most of these games are crafted around catchy animations, this will be a particularly engaging resource if you’re a highly visual learner.
After you’ve exhausted the topics and games, you can also take Italian tests on all the topics.
Conjuguemos
Like the previous two resources, Conjuguemos offers worksheets for many languages, including Italian. Because they’re short on explanations (read: there are pretty much no explanations), I recommend having a solid foundation in Italian prior to using this practice tool.
First, you can take practice vocabulary quizzes. There are quizzes organized by level or themed vocabulary quizzes covering feelings, clothing, food words and more.
You can use the online interface and grading tool for immediate feedback on your work. However, if you prefer, you can print off worksheets to take with you on the go (or if you just want to cut yourself off from tools like Google Translate while you take the quiz).
Second, you can take practice verb conjugation quizzes. These cover verb tenses such as the present, future, past and even the subjunctive mood.
Again, you can use the online practice interface for immediate corrections and feedback or print worksheets of your own. These worksheets include verb conjugation tables, crosswords and word searches as well.
Italian-grammar.net
Moving on to more advanced Italian practice resources, it’s time to flex those Italian muscles! While not actually a website that has online Italian quizzes, Italian-grammar.net is a great place to find downloadable worksheets in order to practice Italian grammar.
These worksheets are divided in three categories: beginner, intermediate and advanced. Worksheets cover topics such as verbs, adverbs and pronouns and even advanced topics such as combined adverbs and the subjunctive.
This is perfect for learners who want supplementary practice material for a course or other self-study program. Match one of these worksheets with a lesson or a tutorial and practice your heart away!
Best of all, each worksheet comes with an answer key, but don’t peek! Try doing the worksheets on your own and then use the answer key for corrections!
Grammatica Italiana (Italian Grammar)
Our last resource for finding Italian practice materials online is our most advanced. Because the website Grammatica Italiana (Italian Grammar) is completely in Italian, I suggest this for those who have at least an intermediate level of Italian.
This is also an especially useful resource for targeting several different specific language skills.
The website offers short Italian grammar tutorials with corresponding exercises. You can click on tutorials for topics such as articoli (articles), verbi (verbs) or aggettivi (adjectives), get a small tutorial on the topic and then do the interactive exercises.
Exercises typically include fill-in-the-blank questions, but they also have answers under the vedere soluzione (see the solution) button.
Pointer fingers ready? Practice your Italian online by swiping and scrolling your way to Italian fluency!
Download: This blog post is available as a convenient and portable PDF that you can take anywhere. Click here to get a copy. (Download)
