Intensive Elementary Italian · Italian
Essential vocab, about 6 verb tenses, essential grammar as well as some more advanced (at least for an elementary course) grammatical concepts. Basically, I learned enough to feel as though I could get by in Italy if I really needed to.
Heavy weekly textbook work (after all, it's intensive), but it's not actually required; weekly quizzes; semi-frequent compositions; an oral presentation; midterm; final. For a 6 credit course, pretty reasonable and light.
A whirlwind of Italian learning that I found challenging and exciting. Loved my classmates, loved Barbara <3 and I love love Italian so the stars aligned! We learned at least a tense a week and a ton of vocab, but Barbara did an amazing job connecting what we were learning to our lives. I remember one quiz on the conditional tense, I spent 20 minutes on one section trying to figure out: What exactly do I want from my job? From my life? Lemme tell you, a quiz is not the best time to have an existential crisis.
Professor Palumbo is, in short, amazing. Ideal. This woman deserves a gold star. Honestly, there's absolutely nothing more you could want in a language teacher. She genuinely cares about her students and, above all, LOVES to teach-- which isn't so common at Columbia. Additionally, she's very lenient with grading, which is a relief in a language class-- it allows you to relax and to let yourself to make mistakes, take linguistic risks. And she has an adorable accent (even if most of the class is conducted in Italian.) Although she assigns a lot of work, I wouldn't stress about it. Do it if you think it helps you, but Prof. Palumbo won't force you to do what you don't want to do-- or think that you don't need (if you really don't need it.) Overall, this class was a joy. You'll definitely reap what you sow. If you don't participate or do the work, you won't learn Italian (very well.) But if you have a genuine interest in learning Italian, this is as good as it gets.
We learned the basics of the Italian language through two semesters of content. As I can recall, we got through the present, perfect, future, and conditional tenses. We learned the indicative, imperative, and subjunctive voices as well. The methods in which we learned these skills included studies about Italian culture (food, some cinema, places, family, etc.).
A huge amount about Italian grammar structures
This course taught me two semesters worth of italian at a fast but reasonable pace that worked very well for me.
I highly recommend this class to students who have previous exposure to Italian or who studied the language a while ago and want to pick it back up.
I enrolled in this course having taking several years of Spanish and Latin in high school. I believe my knowledge of these other Romance languages provided an entire groundwork for me to learn Italian. If a student has never studied or haven experience with a Romance language before, I think it might be better for them to start off more slowly, with a less intense amount of work and class time per week, so that they can initiate their learning in a comfortable and secure manner.
definitely don't take this if you have no prior knowledge of other romance languages unless you are a really quick study