As an ESL teacher I use videos and listening exercises to help my students improve their English, and I use the same methods to improve my Italian. Here’s your assignment:
1) Start by watching an Italian film without any subtitles.
Choose a movie that you’ve never watched before, and make sure it’s one that doesn’t have a lot of dialect.
This might seem a little stressful, but do it. Do it with a notepad, jotting down words and expressions that you want to remember. Don’t panic; if you don’t understand every word, that’s not important. Try to relax and just get the main ideas. Choose a comedy or a movie with a lot of action and let the characters guide you. As the movie progresses, you will find yourself understanding more and more.
Think about these things: a) Who are the characters and what are their relationships to one another? b) What are the themes? Are there more than one? c) Identify the locations in the film and d) make notes of the parts that you understand well.
Try to make note of the locations in the film of the difficult parts are so that you can go back to them later but try not to stop the film. Just relax and let if flow.
2) Now watch it again with Italian subtitles.
This time you can stop the film whenever you like. When you see words or phrases that you want to remember or that you don’t know, write them down. Try to make note of their locations in the film so that you can go back to them if you need to.
Try not to use your italian dictionary.
Are some lightbulbs turning on now? Do you understand the plot clearly?
3) If not, watch it again with the English subtitles.
If you’ve made note of locations of words or phrases that you don’t know, go to them with English subtitles and make them your new WORDS TO REMEMBER.
If there are phrases that you still don’t understand, they are probably idioms. Google them and maybe you can get a better idea of their meaning. Or ask an Italian friend.
4) Write a review or a recap of the film in italian, and use your new words.
Go out of your way to use them as much as you can the next few weeks to get it firmly planted into your brain.
Some good choices:
Pane e Tulipani (Bread and Tulips) – There’s a lot of action in this comedy, and though you can hear different accents from different Italian regions, they are pretty easy to understand. (For fun, listen for the way Venetians speak!)
Venti Sigarette (20 Cigarettes) would be fun because it’s action packed.
If you can get a copy of something like Giuseppe Tornatore’s English language La Migliore Offerta (The Best Offer) with the option to watch it dubbed into Italian, this would be really helpful, because the phrases will be ones that you are more familiar with.
I Love Italian Everything 