My Italian Learning Resources — Everything I’ve Made So Far

If you’ve been following Italiano Chiaro for a while, you’ll know that most of what I do is teach — one-to-one lessons, small groups, videos. But over the past year I’ve also been putting together a small collection of downloadable resources for independent learners: things you can work through at your own pace, on your own time.

Here’s everything that’s currently available.

For grammar: a verb workbook

The newest addition is Italian Verb Patterns for English Speakers — a 109-page workbook that takes you through the Italian verb system from the ground up.

I wrote it because my students kept telling me the same thing: there aren’t many grammar books in English that explain Italian the way a teacher would. Most are either too academic or too superficial. I wanted something practical — clear explanations, real examples, exercises that actually make you produce Italian rather than just recognise it.

The workbook covers eleven units, from the present tense to reflexive verbs, including a unit dedicated entirely to the passato prossimo vs imperfetto distinction — the one that trips up almost every English speaker. There’s also an Answer Key and a Quick Reference Appendix with all the main tables in one place.

Throughout the book you’ll find Cognate alert boxes — my favourite part. These show you the connections between Italian words and English through Latin and Old French. Finire and finish. Partire and depart. Avere and habit, habitat, inhabit. Once you see these connections, you don’t forget them. And that’s exactly the point.

For reading practice: two collections of short stories

The first resources I made were graded readers — short stories in simple Italian for beginners, designed for A1 and A2 level.

Italian Short Stories for Beginners has eight original stories with bilingual glossaries and exercises after each one. Letture Facili per Studenti di Italiano has seven graded texts with vocabulary tables and comprehension exercises. Both are ideal for self-study.

Reading in Italian — even short, simple texts — is one of the best things you can do as a beginner. It builds vocabulary in context, trains your eye for grammar patterns, and gives you the satisfaction of actually understanding something in a foreign language.

All resources are available on Gumroad as instant PDF downloads — printable, so you can work through them on paper if you prefer.

More resources are in the works. If there’s something specific you’d find useful — a particular grammar topic, a type of exercise — let me know in the comments.

Buono studio!