I think I hit the jackpot there (the quote above) with Italian. The said quote was taken from Benny Lewis’ newly released book, Fluent in 3 Months. Italian, which is such a beautiful language completely consumed my life for a year and then more. Everything I did and do revolve around it.

My love and passion for Italian was triggered by my first ever Italian friend from Milan, Francesco Santarelli who also soon after that became my travel buddy when he visited Asia during his holidays. I was inspired to learn the language and started my quest by researching free online materials. I found the BBC Italian language portal and started studying the free online course. Another awesome online resource is About.com Italian portal.

I’m very “audio” when I learn a language because for me, listening to the sound is important. I started subscribing to YouTube videos for music and took advantage of my Netflix account to stream movies—all in the target language. At that point in time, everything I sourced for my Italian self-learning were free (except for Netflix because I'm already paying a monthly subscription fee for it but now extending its use).

The more I study, the deeper I fell in love with it. I started buying books. Lots of books. My main reference materials and workbooks are from the McGraw Hill's "Practice Makes Perfect" series. I kept adding other books including the For Dummies series to my personal library, and formed quite an extensive collection. When I was in Italy for a month last year, I brought home almost a luggage of books and dictionaries, all in 100% Italian. I'm proud to say by that time, I'm already able to understand and read Italian books and magazines.

Speaking of magazines, I extended the use of my online magazine subscription at Zinio to include Italian editions of Vogue, L'Impresa, Cosmopolitan, Elle and a few others to ‘enhance’ my leisure reading. All these magazines are sold at super affordable price minus the clutter. I’m talking about a year’s subscription for the price of one physical issue bought at a bookstore. Foreign magazines are expensive!

Last but certainly not least, communicating with the natives. I started making more friends, especially on Babbel, which is an online language learning website. It was here I found my regular chat buddy who’s an Italian. He doesn't know a word of English, so I’m forced (in very good ways) to speak only Italian with him. It works fabulously as an immersion tactic.

I’ve been practicing all of the above for more than a year now, and I assure you, they work marvelously well for me. When I reached page 16 of Benny’s book, I was nodding my head like crazy because he, too, speaks of all the methods I've been using! I can't wait to unearth more of the contents as I race through his book. Buono studio e buon lavoro!