Studio l'italiano!

I'm learning Italian! After seven years of studying German at secondary school, which culminated in an A-level grade B, I've decided to try my hand at learning another modern foreign language. I chose Italian for a pretty superficial reason: so that I could attempt to read interviews with Sebalter in his mother tongue. Still, as time goes on I'm starting to really enjoy developing my skills. It's a nice change to be learning at my own pace and for my own personal interest, rather than for a qualification. The main resource I'm using is Duolingo, a free web/app platform which generates simple listening, reading, writing and speaking activities within discrete lessons, helping the user to gradually acquire knowledge of the target language. The focus is on learning through experience rather than explanation, although the comments section is useful for finding out the theory behind each sentence. Strength bars indicate the skills that need to be improved, and it's always possible to strengthen skills, which is particularly useful when I don't feel like learning a completely new topic. I also have a 3 in 1 book, the Collins Easy Learning Complete Italian, which has grammar, verb and vocabulary sections. So far it's been useful to clarify grammar points introduced on Duolingo, and I might use it to write notes and flashcards. I've been learning for almost two months now and according to Duolingo I've acquired 30 skills and learned 862 words. My next challenge is the perfect tense... oh, and I'm starting uni in a couple of days! Alla prossima!