september 2025 check-in
September was such an eventful month in terms of my languages! Let's see if I can manage to squeeze in everything I want to share.
Italian
After a bit of a slump that started back in late July, I'm happy to say I feel more enthusiastic about getting better at Italian than ever!! I have a lot of areas I want to improve in and little by little I've been making progress in all of them!
First of all, I'm continuing my writing practice — I now have 20 mini-essays under my belt. I don't make myself write every day anymore, but 3 times a week feels like a good enough frequency. I feel like my writing's getting better, but at the same time I don't overextend myself, given that I have lots of other language activities I'm eager to do.
In my first post here I have talked about my 100 Days of Reading challenge. This year I decided to read in Italian, just like last year — the only difference is that this time around I'm only reading Italian books I actually own (I'm allowed to read e-books and listen to audiobooks, of course, but they don't count towards the challenge). The goal is to read every single day until January 1. I started on September 23rd and I haven't skipped any days yet! To see what books I'm reading, check out this page.
To get ready for the challenge (and get myself out of my reading slump), I read a couple of shorter books/essays. Il vestito dei libri by Jhumpa Lahiri (very much inspired by seeing Jhumpa in person TWICE in October) was exactly what I needed to get back into reading in Italian. The other tiny book I read in September was Il fascismo eterno by Umberto Eco (my first Eco book, yay!). This one was really special because I finished it a couple minutes before a call with my tutor Elias so we spent the whole lesson talking about the book (which was definitely a challenge but also not as much as I would think)! I also highly recommend the book, even if you don't read in Italian (the English title, I believe, is How to Spot a Fascist).
Now speaking-wise, I have been enjoying it more than ever! I'm still following my system where every week I have two italki classes: one with my regular tutor Gloria and one with another tutor (I'll buy a 5-lesson package with them and then look for a new tutor once I'm done). This allows me to have some sense of continuity and have a teacher who can evaluate my progress over time, and at the same time to expose myself to more speakers of Italian (plus work on my small talk skills, haha).
I'm happy to say speaking does not feel frustrating anymore! Or I should probably say it does not feel AS frustrating as it used to. But in all seriousness, I've been really enjoying talking to people and I now look forward to my classes instead of dreading them. I guess exposure therapy actually works (who'd have thought).
In terms of more structured studying, I have been having a blast with a series of grammar books from Alma Edizioni. To be completely honest with you, the blast has been more about buying the books than actually finishing them (lol) as it takes much longer to finish one than order it and have it delivered. For now I'm done only with Le congiunzioni italiane e altre parole difficili and I'm working on my Congiuntivo book right now (about time!).
Not going to get into details in this post, but I have also started attending an in-person B2-level course here in NYC! We've only had one session so far, so I'll share my impressions in a future post. (Spoiler alert: they didn't think B2 was the right level for me so I was moved to another class. Stay tuned for more!).
German
Now as for German, things have been a bit more tricky here. After finishing my Begegnungen A1+ textbook in August, I was a little intimidated by the A2+ book (not even the level, just the fact that I had to start from scratch again). Still, I want to be done with beginner study materials by the end of the year, so little by little I'm trying to get there (currently on chapter 3 out of 8!).
Learning vocab on Clozemaster is another activity I stayed pretty consistent with in September. Clozemaster always works great when I'm getting a lot of immersion time, so I've also been making sure to read daily or almost daily. I'm currently in this phase where I can't read what I want yet, but learner materials do not feel exciting anymore, so finding books to read has been a bit of a challenge.
In September I finally finished LiES. Das zweite Buch: Literatur in Einfacher Sprache (as the title suggests, this is the second book in a series — I read the first one between the months of July and August). I don't think I liked the second book as much as the first one, most stories were kind of meh, in my opinion :(
I've also started the Baumgartner & Momsen series by André Klein. These are crime stories for "intermediate and advanced learners" (you know I'm not one, so it's been a real challenge haha). I'm renting the series through Kobo Plus, so instead of reading it on LingQ like I normally would, I have to read on my Kobo Libra Colour or the Kobo app on my phone, which also makes it a bit harder since I can't translate sentences as easily as I do on LingQ. I do think these constraints can be very good for progress, so I'm not complaining!!
Overall, however, German has been feeling like something I need to talk myself into doing. I wonder if at this point I should just accept that actively learning two languages is not something I enjoy (e.g. I mentioned I had a slump when it comes to Italian in August, but August was my best month for German yet! Now I'm having a blast with Italian, potentially at the expense of German). I might need to make a hard decision soon and it's not looking good for German (😅).