How Difficult is Italian 1?

trishthedish
Sun, 19 Jul 2009 20:35:00 +0000

I took Italian 1 in fall of freshman year. It depends really on the time of the class, the gsi, and whether or not you took a language class before.

The time of the class matters because it’s everyday for the next few months. If you personally like getting up at 8 am everyday, then do it. Otherwise, if you get shunted to the 8am spot because every other section is full, good luck. I took Italian 2 at 8am last semester and that’s the last time I’ll ever ever ever take an 8 am class. Ever! I got through it, but it was brutal.

Secondly, you are being taught by GSIs, not by professors. Therefore the workload/participation requirements differ between each section. My GSIs were of varying difficulty, but usually you have a little homework to do everyday and a quiz each week. If you do the homework everyday, the quizzes aren’t too hard.

Thirdly, if you’ve taken a romance language before, you will have an easier time learning the language. Especially if you took Spanish.

Hope that helped! Italian is a beautiful language. :)