Use your shopping list to practice!

When learning a new language through a program or a book, sooner or later you start getting new words for food. It starts with things that you might order in a restaurant, which are hard enough to remember. But before long you’re learning words like peppers, onions, garlic… and eventually you’re wondering what real use you’ll ever have for these new words, why you should learn them, or how you’ll ever remember them.

The solution is simple: write your shopping list in Italian! (Or whatever language you are learning.)

Here is a sample shopping list:

• latte (milk)
• uova (eggs)
• formaggio (cheese)
• pancetta (bacon)
• pane (bread)
• patate (potatoes)
• pomodori (tomatoes)
• sedano (celery)
• latuga (lettuce)
• peperoni rossi (red peppers)
• funghi (mushrooms)
• aglio (garlic)
• farina (flour)
• lasagne
• linguini
• spaghetti

Every time you encounter one of these items for which you don’t yet know the Italian word, just head over to WordReference and look it up. The important thing is that you write the list in Italian, and not English. This way, you learn the word twice: once when you’re making the list, and again when you’re in the store trying to remember what pomidori means!