Course Description
Welcome to our advanced intermediate Italian course, tailored to those of you who have already achieved an intermediate level of proficiency and are eager to deepen your knowledge and understanding of the Italian language. Our comprehensive program aims to immerse you in authentic Italian texts, multimedia resources, and engaging activities that will enhance your language skills and cultural appreciation.

Key Features of the Course:

• Diverse Text Analysis: Delve into a wide range of Italian texts, including narrative excerpts, literary pieces, newspaper articles. Analyzing these materials will sharpen your reading comprehension and expose you to different writing styles.
• Interactive Out-of-Classroom Activities: Our course goes beyond traditional classroom settings. You will participate in “street” interviews, collect direct testimonies on contemporary life, and conduct short surveys, encouraging meaningful interactions within the vibrant Italian city.
• Reflective Exercises: Strengthen your oral communication and writing abilities by preparing short oral accounts and essays based on your activities and experiences. These reflections will help you express your thoughts more fluently and accurately.
• Vocabulary Enrichment: Expand your lexicon by focusing on idiomatic expressions, colloquial language, and proverbs, allowing you to communicate like a native speaker with ease and confidence.
• Grammar and Morphology: Develop a solid grasp of various grammatical structures and morphological aspects of the Italian language. Our experienced instructors will guide you through comprehensive lessons to enhance your linguistic accuracy.
• Cultural Immersion: Immerse yourself in the richness of Italian culture, exploring political subcultures, cinema, music, and other cultural aspects. This exposure will deepen your appreciation of the language and its cultural context.

By the end of this course, you will have refined your abilities in reading, writing, listening, and speaking Italian. Our dynamic approach to language learning will equip you with the skills needed to navigate real-life situations confidently and engage in meaningful conversations with native speakers.

Join us on this exciting language journey, where language and culture intertwine to provide you with a truly immersive learning experience. Enroll now and embrace the beauty of the Italian language and its cultural diversity.

Interactive lessons and activities
Our lessons are thoughtfully divided into two fundamental components:

• Focus on grammatical and syntactical expertise: During the initial part of each lesson, we provide students with comprehensive insights into Italian grammar and syntax, adopting an engaging communicative approach. 
• Mastering communication skills: the second part of our lessons is dedicated to improving your conversational abilities. Engage in real-life scenarios, practice listening, comprehend written and spoken language, and actively participate in various language production exercises. To augment your learning experience, we leverage audiovisual aids, captivating songs, and videos.

Beyond the classroom, our program offers a diverse range of excursion and co-curricular activities, designed to immerse you in the Italian culture and apply your newfound knowledge. Here’s a glimpse of some of the included activities:

• Day trip to Tuscany.
• Exploration of medieval towns in the heart of Umbria, such as Assisi and Spello.
• Weekly tandem language exchanges with Italian students. 
• Visits to Perugia’s prominent museums.
• Journeys through the rich Italian food culture, through cooking classes and wine tastings, and local food festivals.
• Local food festivals, celebrating the true spirit of Italian cuisine.
• Cinema nights
• Visit to the Perugia Opera Theatre (Teatro Morlacchi)

Course Structure
ITAL 311 S meets four days per week (Mon-Thur) and consists of two 1.5 hour morning classes focused on conversation and grammar. In the afternoons and evenings, and sometimes on Fridays, cultural activities in Italian are scheduled. 

Main Grammar Points
The course will begin with a quick review of ITAL 311 S grammar and thereafter cover the following grammatical points:

• Congiuntivo imperfetto e trapassato
• Concordanza dei tempi (C.)
• Connettivi
• Pronomi relativi
• Periodo ipotetico
• Forma passiva
• Forma impersonale
• Alcuni verbi pronominali
• Passato remoto
• Discorso diretto e indiretto
• Modi indefiniti

Course Objectives
At the end of the session, students should reach the level B2+ of the Common European Framework in the four basic competencies: listening, speaking and interacting, reading, and writing. (In some cases, a student may achieve C1 in the reading and writing competencies.) In practice, you will be able to:

• Interact with a native speaker without too much effort in both formal and informal settings.
• Produce clear texts on various topics and express a personal opinion on current affairs and events, offering both the advantages and the disadvantages of different positions.
• Understand the principal ideas of a text containing concrete and abstract topics.
• Understand radio and television passages of the following types: announcements, advertisements, news briefings, short comic passages, current affairs programming, interviews, and talk shows.
• Acquire a basic vocabulary of 1500 words and a smaller specialized vocabulary tied to one’s own area of study, one’s personal interests, and to the Italian culture and civilization topics covered in class.
• Write texts on familiar topics or those of personal interest and on aspects of culture and contemporary society (in the form of brief compositions, summaries, informal and formal letters, and short essays and stories);
• Understand diverse aspects of Italian culture and reflect on the comparison between his/her own culture and that of the host country.