La mia casa Questo è il mio primo testo in italiano. In questo testo parlo del mio appartamento. Ho un appartamento. Il mio appartamento non è grande, ma è bello. In questo appartamento c'è un balcone. Il balcone è grande, ma non è largo. In questo appartamento ci sono tre camere. Le camere non sono grandi. La mia camera ha due finestre. Le finestre sono grandi. Io non ho un giardino. Non ho molti fiori sul mio balcone.

How Instagram Helps To Learn More, Part II Hello, everybody! I promised to continue my story about me learning four languages at a time within a challenge on instagram called "100 days of languages". The idea is to spend at least fifteen minutes a day learning chosen languages. I picked English (you can read about it in my previous entry), French, Italian and German for myself. Today's text is about French. Some of you might know that I speak French fluently because I spent my last six years living in a French-speaking country. Why do I want to "learn" it? Because we do not have to stop learning a language, ever! It's impossible to be perfect in any language, even our native. So I've decided to expand my vocabulary and learn more precise words for different occasions, because I tend to use "general" vocabulary to express anything. And my favorite way of doing this is reading. So I chose a book written in modern language and from time to time I find some very useful words and expressions in there. I use a digital notebook to record them and I repeat these lists every day. But I don't just write the word and a translation. I always try to find an expression or a phrase that uses this particular word, because learning single words without context is useless, believe me. If you don't know how to use it in a phrase it won't stay in your head. Another thing that helps me to learn new words and expressions is to write definitions of words I learn in a language I learn. For example, for the word "emmener" it would look like this: emmener - mener quelqu'un avec soi d'un lieu dans un autre ; conduire, transporter Le bus vous emmènera jusqu'à la Concorde. So normally I wouldn't even write anything in Russian (my mother tongue), except for some really difficult cases. One last thing I want to improve in my French is grammar, because in a spoken language we don't use many tenses, just present, a few of past tenses and a future, so my knowledge of less popular ones fades with time. But sometimes, here and there, we actually need them and I'm getting lost, because I don't really remember the right way to use them. That's why I want to strengthen my knowledge of rare grammar tenses to be able to use them in a right moment. Today's entry might be a little messier then the previous, but I'm leaving it like this because we cannot correct ourselves in real life when speaking. Thank you for reading it until the end. I wish all the best with your learning experience and see you soon!

How Instagram Helps To Learn More It's been a while since I've last written anything here. Nothing has changed, though, I'm still studying English. In fact, I do more and more everyday, I think I am addicted to it. My passion for languages never wears thin (maybe you can suggest more correct expression here?) I decided to take part in a challenge on Instagram, called "100 days of languages". I'm already on my 26th day and I love it! The idea is that I choose one or more languages I want to improve and I dedicate at least fifteen minutes a day to work on them. I started with English, French, German and Italian. For some time I was trying to learn some Spanish too, but very quickly I understood that it's a bit too much right now. Maybe in future, because the language is fantastic. So first I had to set my goals for each of my chosen languages. Today I'm going to write about English. My goals are: 1. I want to read more in order to expand my vocabulary and maybe reach level C1 although it's really hard to know exactly where that is. 2. I would like to really boost my pronunciation. So together with my adorable teacher here on Italki we're working on it. My weak points are the difference between "i" and "e" (as in "ship" and "sheep" and so on), the "th" sound (my "favourites" words are "three" and "with"). There are other little things, but I'm working on it by reading almost everything aloud. 3. Of course I would also like to improve my grammar. Aside from doing exercises every day, reading helps me a lot with this because I see all these grammatical rules "in action". Maybe I forgot to mention something, but for me these three points are essential for now and I'm working really hard. I've just started to read "Wives and daughters" by Elizabeth Gaskell. I was a bit afraid of this book because it has almost eight hundred pages and the language isn't quite modern. But as I really want to improve my English, I can't look for simple ways to do this because it doesn't really work. Of course I understand that half of the words and expressions I will encounter it the book won't be useful for everyday conversations, but I think I'll "feel" the language much better with this "old" and beautiful way of expression once I finish it. Thank you for reading this until the end! I'll continue with other languages in my next entry. Thank you if you're going to correct my note, it would be so helpful. I'm still learning and I'm sure there are errors I haven't caught, but I'm glad to be back!

Practice make perfect Hello, language enthusiasts! How are you? If you are a native English speaker reading my note here you see some verbs you might have changed to phrasal verbs so it "sounds" more natural, please, do it! I'll be so happy! I've been actively learning English for the past few month and I remembered I have a notebook here on Italki. It's a great way to practice new words I've been trying to learn by writing down some sentences or maybe even a little story, I'll see what I can do. And of course I'm very much looking forward for your corrections and advices and if you need help in Russian, Ukrainian or French, you can contact me by private messages. Ok, let's get started. So, recently I came upon a great tool that now helps me with English learning: the application called Evernote. It's a sort of notebook you can fill with any information you want. I use it for writing down new words that caught my eye in books or articles. When I see a word I want to learn I write it down in a matching notebook (nouns, verbs, adverbs etc.) and then I go to the Cambridge dictionary online and copy the definition of the word and some of the examples. One of the prettiest words I've learned so far was "to tweak" as to correct something slightly. What a funny and useful word! Actually I'm trying to break through the "plateau" stage a lot of learners experiences at the intermediate level. What do you do to avoid this unpleasant situation? I immerse myself into the language, trying to read a lot and to learn a bunch of new words every day. I know it's important to get familiar with popular phrasal verbs and some idioms. But I struggle there because even if I see them in a movie or in a book I never know if it's current or old fashioned language. I'm trying to tackle this problem on my own but maybe someone have an idea where to find really useful idioms that native speakers use every day? I'll be really grateful. I hope I won't give up my notebook as I did a year ago. I really want to improve my level in English so I'll do everything to achieve this goal. See you soon!

Английский вместе!

Ищу таких же фанатов английского языка, как я! Кто хотел бы учить английский вместе? Не просто общаться по английски, а разбирать какие-то тексты, видео, грамматические правила и так далее? Вместе всегда легче и интереснее.

Guten Abend Guten Abend. Ich heiße Nina. Ich wohne in Schweiz. Wie geht's? Ich will die deutsche Sprache lernen weil ich in Basel arbeiten werde. Heute habe ich die deutsche Sprache gelernt. Bis später!

German! Hi there! I was extremely busy for the past few weeks. You already know that I finished my Master's but I this Friday I had an important competition my future life in Switzerland depended of. And...I won it! Yeah! Now I'm free, I finally have holidays and I can breathe deeply without thinking about anything that makes me feel unconfident. I'll just describe briefly how the competition went. So, I had to go to the city where the audition took place the evening before because it takes me more that two hours to get there and it started at 10 a.m. (so I had to be there around 9 a.m. for a warm-up). I stayed at my friend's apartment for the night and at 9 a.m. I was already there. All violinists had to stay in one small room and I'm sure everybody got a headache almost immediately. At 10 a.m. we had a drawing (or what is the word for such a thing when you have to pull a random number?) and I got the number four. I was really happy because there where twenty-seven musicians and if I got any greater number I would have to wait a long time before you start playing and this is exhausting. I played pretty well the first round and in two or even three hours the results were announces. Can you imagine how happy I was when I heard that I passed to the second round? And it started immediately, so just in 15 minutes I was already done and had to wait until the others play. But we were already only ten for the second round. And it might be the third, but we didn't have it because the jury already decided the four people they want to take to the orchestra. And I was the first one! It was cool to know that we don't have to play the third round because it was almost three p.m. when we got the results for the second and we were hungry and tired. So now you know what it is like the orchestra auditions. It's an exhausting thing, really. And the thing is...that now I have to learn German!!! So, see you soon! I'll go and get my first German dictionary!

Writing letters Hello! It's been a while since I wrote my last entry. I was extremely busy this week because of an orchestra project. We play the music of a Swiss composer while a narrator tells the story names "The Wild Swans" written by Hans Christian Andersen. We've already played five concerts and we'll play the last one on Tuesday. Well, today I was going to write my entry on a subject I'm very interested of - writing letters. Everything started with a postcrossing project . The idea is to send and receive postcards from all over the world. So I started with that by then I was soon disappointed by the amount of people who didn't care about choosing something pretty. I received a lot of ad-postcards and frankly ugly ones whereas I was trying to choose unique postcards according to the lists of preferences everybody can share on their profile pages. After two or three month of these unequal exchanges I decided to stop spending money. But I love writing so I was wondering if I can find someone for a letters-writing. And I found a few friends on Instagram. I was writing a lot of letters for one year, but now I have five or six penpals left and I'm happy to be friends with them and keep writing. I also like decorating envelopes and I wonder if my postman is angry with me because of that =D Have a good day! Nina

Vocabulary building again Hello! I was silent these days because of being sick - it's boiling me. So, I started m journey to C1 in English by the end of this year. I haven't decided yet I'll take a real exam or just do usual online test. Well, that is not the point. The point is that I have a strong will to do it and to do it right. I want to learn about fifteen-thirty words every day by writing them down with as many examples as I can find. The most exiting thing here for me is that in almost every entry in dictionary I can found a lot of interesting references, useful word combinations, synonyms etc. So the word I learn becomes familiar to me much easier due to my interest in it than if I would learn just a single word without its "family". Isn't it amazing? I bet you'll like this way of learning new words. I have some problems with phrasal verbs, it's the hardest part in learning English for me. I know I'll not resolve this by reading a lists of the most common ones and trying to learn them by heart. I'll find them in the books, movies and some examples I'll surely find in a dictionary below a next new word. If I found out the meaning of a phrasal verb by reading phrase just in English, I'll memorize it. This kind of way I think could work out for me. I'll keep you informed on my progress. See you soon! Nina