This week has been particularly frustrating for me with not being fluent in the Italian language. It affected me this week even more because I encountered so many instances where I couldn’t say or express myself the way I wanted to in Italian. I get so frustrated sometimes because I feel like I have missed out on so many friendships or opportunities to have a genuine conversation due to my lack of Italian language skills.
There’s been plenty of times where the natives tell me that my Italian is good, but I know it’s not good enough. Not good enough to show my true personality and say everything that I want to say. Not only that, but many times I get nervous because I don’t want to say the wrong words, and instead I end up forgetting words that I actually do know. I just second-guess myself a lot and end up being worse at speaking than my true potential. I overthink a lot instead of just letting the words flow out naturally.
Anyway, I say this week has been particularly frustrating because during my Italian classes, there have been many times where I wanted to raise my hand and speak up, but I was scared to say the wrong thing. This has happened many times and to this day, I still haven’t spoken up in class on my own. In order to address this, I signed up for a partner language exchange program at my university where I can practice Italian with someone and they can practice English with me. I have only met up with this person once because I have been super busy, but I have learned a lot more words.
Also, I have made some other Italian friends and I write to them in only Italian to improve my vocabulary. If I don’t know something, I google translate it and that has been the best way to learn new words. Additionally, I challenged myself by going to get a hair cut at a hair salon and only speaking to them in Italian. I got complimented on how well I knew the language so that was nice.
Anyway, I just wanted to express how I feel about not being fluent in Italian because it affects me a lot and I need to make big changes if I want to take advantage of all the opportunities in this country. My goal is to be almost fluent by the time I leave Italy.