Christina Ball is the founder and director of Speak! Language Center, a foreign language and culture center based in Charlottesville, Virginia. As an Italianist with a Ph.D in Italian Literature from Yale University, Christina has taught Italian language and culture to students from 4-84 for the past 18 years, both at schools and universities and, now, at Speak! She not only helps people around the country plan ideal trips to Italy, but also meets intrepid Italian language lovers from around the world in the Umbrian Hilltown of Todi for her popular two week immersion experience, Two Weeks in Todi.

So you wish you could speak Italian (French, Spanish…)?
As a child growing up in the suburbs of Boston, my siblings and I spent weekends listening to my grandparents speaking, singing and – only rarely – yelling in melodic, gesture-rich, familiar yet mysterious italiano. Eager to be accepted as an American and distance herself from her family’s immigrant roots, my mother never spoke to us in the Neapolitan dialect of her parents and thus we kids were often surrounded by the sounds of a language that we, unfortunately,  couldn’t really understand.

Perhaps precisely for this reason, foreign tongues have always fascinated me – with Italian leading the pack. After years of studying French in middle and high school, I could finally immerse myself in the Italian language and culture during a blissful college semester in Rome.   In the sun-drenched piazzas and noisy trattorias of this dynamic city, within a few months all of those pesky verbs conjugations finally gelled in my mind and actually started flowing from my tongue with ease and, eventually, beautiful fluency. Thus began my obsession with combining language learning with cultural immersion as often as possible – and eventually making it my life’s personal and professional mission.

Before the ink could dry on my college diploma, I was already living in the hilltown of Cortona in Tuscany, creating an edition of handmade books at an art school there and practicing my Italian with every barista, shopkeeper and new friends for a period of 4 months.  A few years later, as a graduate student at Yale (guess what I decided to study? Italian literature - certo!), I scored a year in Bologna as a Fulbright scholar where I not only attended classes with Italian graduate students but also shared an apartment with two Italians who were gifted story and joke tellers.

Before returning to Yale for the fall, I took a three month pit-stop in Seville, Spain where I jump-started my Spanish by studying four hours daily at a local school  and living with a young woman who, like most Spaniards, was incredibly social. I was basically forced to put whatever I learned in class each morning (and whatever I could translate from Italian) into fast use at tapas bars and out-of-town excursions with her exuberant circle of friends.

In Sevilla, as in Rome, Cortona and Bologna, I realized that becoming truly fluent in a foreign language involves much more than grammar, vocabulary and excellent pronunciation. Language cannot exist in a bubble, because it is rich with cultural nuances, subtle intonation shifts, meaning-packed gestures and facial expressions – basically, all of the elements that make up the true pulse, the heart and soul of a language.  Elements that most online course are ill equipped to teach.  As I’ve not only experienced first-hand, but also witnessed as a foreign language specialist, without cultural awareness and face-to-face conversations, without festivals and long, leisurely meals, language skills acquired with a head-set on or in a cultural vacuum can only take you so far.

Since 2004 as the owner of Speak! Language Center, where we teach 10 languages using a cultural and conversational method, I have witnessed students of all ages gain  – and retain – proficiency by merging live, conversation-based classes in their home town with prolonged periods of language and culture immersion abroad.  Adult students in Virginia -  let’s use Italian as an example – take from 1-3 classes a week at Speak! ranging from the basics to courses teaching language through opera or film.  Once they have built a strong foundation, it’s off to Italy – often to the hilltown of Todi in Umbria – where they become fully immersed in the language and culture for an extended period of time.

Just like I did as a student, participants in Speak!’s Italian immersion program study Italian for 3-4 hours each morning in small or individual conversation-based classes and spend the rest of their day chatting with their host family over long lunches, making friends with the barista and the hairdresser, reading, attending concerts and, ultimately, living like a local. Within a few months, most not only attain a high level of proficiency in the language (much depends on the individual) but also find themselves using dialect words, gestures and even exclamations entirely unique to that particular Umbrian town. They adjust to the rhythm of life, learn to nap between 2-4pm, to have small breakfasts and big lunches, to drink wine at midday and to lose their fear of mispronouncing a word here or there. They learn that to truly become fluent in Italian requires, simply, speaking with and living like a local.

Personally, I have found that students not only achieve the best results in a short period of time through this method, but also retain what they’ve learned for much longer.

Dreaming of new sounds flowing off your tongue with ease?

SIX STEPS TO LINGUISTUIC AND CULTURAL FLUENCY

LOVE IT TO LEARN IT! Pick a language you a truly motivated to learn, whether for personal or professional reasons.

PREPARE YOUR FOUNDATION. Before planning your immersion experience abroad, build a strong foundation in grammar and pronunciation via one-on-one or small group conversation-based language lessons. Use online resources for extra practice but always prioritize face-to-face speaking opportunities as much as possible.

TALK IT UP. Language is social! Learn with a friend or as a family in order to assure ample practice time and to make the learning experience more interactive and fun.

LANGUAGE IS CULTURE. Immerse yourself in the CULTURE of the language you’re learning! Watch films, listen to music or dialogues while strolling or driving, practice cooking the cuisine and read, read, read!

GRAB YOUR PASSPORT! Plan your IMMERSION EXPERIENCE ABROAD. Select a program that will allow you to live with a host family, study in very small group or in one-on-one classes for 3-4 hours per day and introduce you to a variety of locals through cultural encounters and excursions.

USE IT OR LOSE IT!  Just as a plant needs sunshine and water to stay alive and, ideally, thrive, your new language needs to be exercised after you return home through lots of spoken practice.