Università degli Studi di Firenze

Most Italians who you can socialise with, are really interested in meeting a native English speaker who wants to learn their language, and will make an effort to socialise with you and help you. But the initial 'getting to know them' is hard, we found the men are really forward in wanting to know the girls, the Italian women generally don't wanna know anyone but Italian men. And foreign guys are pretty much at a disadvantage, unless your female friends introduce you to their Italian male-friends!

If you really want to learn Italian you simply have to go to Italy. The people are very nice, helpful and thankful for every "grazie" and "Ciao". Don't be afraid of talking but never forget that Italians are very polite people - they would never correct you if you don't ask them to! The city of Florence pays for a language class (Via Morgani). The Italian spoken in and around Florence (toscano) is really nice and you'll soon pick up an accent.

As an Italian major, this was the best experience possible for me. At first I did struggle a bit, but the Italians were so helpful and encouraging, that I quickly improved, The majority of the year I felt extremely comfortable in any situation and greatly enjoyed abandoning my english for the year.

I lived in Florence for about 4 months and was struggling to pick up the language. However, as soon as I was immeresed in a challenging Italian course with Italian students my language skills in Italian to started to fly.

First it was quite difficult to understand and speak italian...but since no one spoke something else (french, english,...) I had no other choice but to learn italian as good as possible...

i arrived there without any kmowledge of italian, but i had studied latin 3 years at my college, wich made me very confortably to learn the language.