Are you fascinated by the Italian culture and lifestyle, cuisine, historic cities, art and beautiful landscapes? Have you always loved the sound and musicality of the Italian language? Perhaps you’ve visited an Italian city and wished you could chat with local people. Or maybe you would like to be able to read a menu, talk about yourself, your job and find out about other people’s.

Whether you have no previous experience of Italian or you have already picked up some words and phrases from travelling across Italy, this introduction with Open Learn gives you a chance to start an exciting new learning experience, with a range of activities. This introduction offers the perfect opportunity to develop the skills needed to communicate effectively in Italian in everyday contexts!

Part 1: order food and drink using key phrases and recognise the words for drinks and snacks in an Italian bar understand the different ways of serving coffee in Italy say please and thank you recognise different nouns and their gender appreciate some of the most famous Italian bars and the specialities available when visiting them.

Part 2: ask and say the time talk about time using ‘ten past’ and ‘ten to’ talk about different times of the day feel more confident in the pronunciation of numbers.

Part 3: make enquiries about train travel, journey time and distances understand the ferry and train networks in Italy use vocabulary for talking about different types of train use c’è (‘there is’) and ci sono (‘there are’).