Eight chairs around a table, a whiteboard switching on, a teacher who calls you by name before you have even sat down. That is how an intensive course at Spaziolingua begins, and on Monday 14 September it will begin again, with classes at levels A1, A2, B1 and B2 at Via Petrarca 6 in Milan. Enrolment is open, and places are few by definition: there are, after all, eight chairs.
People who have never taken a language course tend to picture it as a university lecture in miniature: one person explains, the others take notes. It is not like that, and the gap between the idea and the reality is exactly why so many people put it off. So let us do something simple: follow that Monday from beginning to end, hour by hour, so you know precisely what to expect.
A few days earlier: the level test (which is not an exam)
The first day actually starts before the first day. When you enrol, you take a free level test online; it takes a few minutes. Its purpose is not to pass or fail you but to put you in the right class, the one where you understand enough to follow and not so much that you get bored. You receive your result and a tutor tells you which group you will join.
Classes follow the CEFR, the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages, and the four levels starting in September correspond to four different people you might be.
- A1 — you have just arrived, you order your coffee by pointing at the machine and you would like to stop. You learn to introduce yourself, ask for information, understand a price and a time.
- A2 — you manage in fixed situations, but as soon as someone goes off script you are lost. You learn to say what you did yesterday, talk about your job, understand a message or a notice.
- B1 — you live in Italy and you function, but you avoid long conversations. You learn to explain an opinion, follow Italians talking to each other, handle the unexpected. It is the level required for citizenship and by many university programmes, and the starting point for the CILS, CELI and PLIDA certifications.
- B2 — you speak, but you can feel the nuance is missing: the irony, the right register, the precise word. You learn to hold your own in a meeting, write a structured email, discuss a film without simplifying what you think.
Not sure where you stand? That is the question the test answers: take it before you enrol and get a tutor’s advice.
9.00 am: the first 45 minutes
Lessons are divided into 45-minute modules. The first module of the first day does not start with the alphabet or a table of conjugations: it starts with you speaking. Even at A1, even with three words. The teacher asks you a question, you answer as best you can, she takes what you said and builds on it. This is the communicative method: the rule comes afterwards, when you need it to say something you could not say without it.
The practical consequence is that by the end of the first module you know the names of the other seven, where they come from and why they are there. In a class of twenty that takes weeks; in a class of eight it happens before the coffee break.
The classrooms have an interactive whiteboard and 4.0 technology: what gets written stays, and at the end of the day you receive an email with the lesson you covered. If you miss a day, you know what to catch up on. Course materials are already included in the price: there is no book to buy separately and no photocopy to chase.
10.30 am: who is sitting on the other seven chairs
By the first break you already have an idea of who the others are. Spaziolingua’s classes bring together people who would never meet outside the classroom: the researcher who arrived for a PhD at the Politecnico, the manager transferred from the Frankfurt office, the retired couple who bought a house on the lake and want to talk to their neighbours, the Korean student who chose Milan for design, the person with a grandmother from Puglia who finally wants to understand what she says on the phone. Different nationalities, different ages, different reasons.
This variety is not a picturesque detail: it is teaching. The only language everyone has in common is the one they are learning, so it gets used out of necessity, even at the coffee machine. And different reasons bring different questions, which the teacher can take on precisely because there are eight of you: the manager asks how to write an email to a supplier, the researcher how to present a poster, the couple how to make an appointment with the plumber. Everyone listens, everyone learns something they would not have thought to ask.
The phrases you hear (and say) on day one
Before any grammar, on the first day you learn classroom Italian: the formulas that let you take part when you still know nothing. It is worth arriving with them in your pocket.
- Come si dice…? — “How do you say…?” The single most useful phrase: it gives you the right to ask for any word.
- Non ho capito, puoi ripetere? — “I didn’t understand, can you repeat?” In class you address the teacher with the informal tu from day one: school is one of the informal spaces of Italian life.
- Che cosa vuol dire…? — “What does… mean?” Vuol dire is the spoken form of significa; hearing it and using it is already a step outside the textbook.
- Piano, per favore. — “Slowly, please.” Asking someone to slow down is not a weakness, it is a skill.
- Facciamo una pausa. — “Let’s take a break.” Every 45 minutes, and the coffee from the machine becomes the course’s first free conversation.
- A che ora è l’aperitivo? — “What time is the aperitivo?” The question always comes before eleven. The answer is a few paragraphs down.
YOU CAN ALSO READ → Tu or Lei? Formal and Informal Italian → How Spaziolingua Adapts Every Course to Your Italian Level → Language and Culture: What You Really Learn in Spaziolingua’s Intensive Courses |
1.00 pm: the second classroom is the city
In the STANDARD formula there are three lessons a day; in STANDARD GOLD there are four, with an extra module on the structures of the language for those who want to consolidate grammar without stealing time from conversation. BLENDED lets you follow the same real class remotely when you cannot be at Via Petrarca. Either way, the afternoon is yours.
And this is where an intensive Italian course in Milan differs from one taken elsewhere, or from home. What you said in the morning for practice you say in the afternoon for real: at the supermarket checkout, at the bar downstairs from the school, to the person asking you the time on the tram. In September the city is in its most generous month: the universities reopen, exhibitions open, Fashion Week arrives at the end of the month and the days are still long. You never run out of excuses to use the language.
A few concrete ideas for the first afternoon, on foot from the school: Parco Sempione and the Castello Sforzesco are ten minutes away, perfect for your first attempts with whoever is selling gelato; a neighbourhood market, where numbers and the names of fruit stop being a page in the book; a bookshop, to buy your first Italian newspaper and discover that you understand more of the headlines than you expected. You do not need to do everything on the first day. You need to do one thing, and do it in Italian.
7.00 pm: the aperitivo
Spaziolingua’s social programme includes the Italian aperitivo — the early-evening drink with snacks that Milan is famous for — along with city visits and workshops. It is not a side dish: it is the part of the course where you find out whether what you learned in the morning holds up in front of a glass and a person who is not your teacher. In their reviews, former students often mention exactly these moments: the museum trips, the aperitivo, classmates who became friends. That is where a class of eight stops being a class.
For anyone arriving from outside Milan, the first day’s aperitivo also has a simpler function: by seven in the evening you already know seven people in the city. That is not nothing.
Why eight
Eight students per classroom is not a number chosen for marketing. It is the number beyond which a teacher can no longer get everyone speaking in every lesson, or correct each mistake at the moment it appears, before it becomes a habit. It is also the number that makes possible something large groups cannot offer: adapting the course to the people in the room, their jobs, their questions, the things they want to say and cannot yet.
For the same reason, nobody at Spaziolingua will tell you in how many weeks you will speak Italian. It depends on you, on your mother tongue, on how much Italian you hear outside the classroom. What the school can promise you is a method that does not waste your time, a group that knows you by name and, at the end of the course, a free final test to measure the distance covered and decide on the next stretch.
The A1, A2, B1 and B2 intensive classes start on 14 September: three formulas, timetables and all the details on the course page.
If your mornings are not your own
The intensive course is designed for people whose mornings are free: students, newcomers, anyone who has decided to give Italian a whole stretch of time. If you work full time, you will find the same class of eight, the same whiteboard and the same daily email in our evening Italian courses, after office hours. If your schedule is unpredictable or you travel often, you can choose our online individual courses, with a certified teacher at the time you prefer, evenings and weekends included. Companies with international staff can set up a corporate Italian course on their premises.
And if the summer has left your Italian a little rusty, or you want to arrive on day one with a routine already in place, these articles will take you further.
YOU CAN ALSO READ → Keep Your Italian Alive This Summer: How to Practise During the Holidays → The Power of Small Groups: Learning Italian in an Intimate Setting |
What to do now
Two steps. The first is the level test. The second is a 15-minute introductory appointment with the school team, in person or remotely: you talk about your goals, your schedule and the formula that makes most sense for you, and you clear up the calendar and enrolment details. If you are a non-EU citizen and will be staying in Italy for more than three months, the school also supports you with the application for a study visa at the Italian embassy or consulate in your country; in that case it is worth contacting the school early, so that your documents are ready before the 14th.
Eight chairs are eight chairs. If you want one of them to be yours, now is the time to write.
Intensive A1–B2 courses in Milan from 14 September. Take the free level test and book a 15-minute appointment with the Spaziolingua team.
