Italian Lessons in London

Search for an Italian tutor in London and you will have a few hundred names in about four seconds, with very little in the list to choose between. The useful question is not how many there are, but which one you will still be turning up for in week seven, when the novelty has worn off and the subjunctive arrives. I am Laura Geraci. I grew up in Catania, in Sicily, and I have been teaching for more than twenty years: QTS, a PGCE, a Cambridge CELTA, and time spent teaching the International Baccalaureate. The people who come to me are travellers, heritage speakers, and adults sitting exams rather later than most.

Lessons run on Microsoft Teams, which for London means the class is wherever you happen to be — the kitchen, the office, a hotel room in Milan. One-to-one is £30 an hour, arranged around your week rather than a fixed timetable. There is also an online group for beginners, and you are welcome to register your interest in the next one. The group is kept small, so nobody spends the lesson listening to other people talk. If you want to ask something before committing, ring me on 07786 107293.

Choosing an Italian tutor in London

Most searches for an Italian tutor in London turn up one of two people: a native speaker who has never been trained to teach, or a trained teacher who is not Italian. The qualifications above are why I am both, and the difference shows up in the dull moments rather than the pleasant ones — when you need someone who can tell you why that sentence was wrong, which rule it broke, and what to practise before next week.

One-to-one tuition is £30 an hour. The online group sessions are £150 for a 10 week course, which is £15 a session, and you are welcome to register your interest in the next beginners’ group. If it is exam help you want rather than conversation, GCSE, A-level and IB Italian have a page of their own, and there is more on how I work as an Italian tutor.

The London learners I tend to meet

London learners tend to lose their evening classes to the journey. An hour across town, an hour back, and a ninety-minute lesson has quietly cost most of a Tuesday; enthusiasm survives about five weeks of that. On Teams the lesson costs you the hour and nothing else. It survives a delayed train, a meeting that overruns, a fortnight of work in Frankfurt. What London is generous with is Italian — spoken in kitchens, sung at you in cafes, printed on menus. What it is short of is the time to sit down and learn it properly.

“Laura is a great teacher — warm, friendly, knowledgeable and encouraging. I really like the style of the lessons with a combination of conversation and worked exercises.”
— Jess  Read all my Google reviews →

Saffron Hill, Frith Street and the church on Clerkenwell Road

You hardly need me to tell you London had a Little Italy, but the particulars are worth having. By 1861 there were around seven hundred Italians in the tight streets near Saffron Hill and Clerkenwell Green, and a second, poorer wave came from central and southern Italy in the 1880s. Carlo Gatti had arrived in 1847 and is the reason ordinary Victorians could afford ice cream at all. St Peter’s, on Clerkenwell Road, was consecrated on 16 April 1863, the first Italian church built outside Italy, modelled on the basilica of San Crisogono in Rome. Luigi Terroni opened a grocer’s beside it at number 138 in 1878. Alfredo Mariani’s provisions shop on Farringdon Road, opened in 1901, became the place generations knew as Gazzano’s. Since 1883 the parish has carried Our Lady of Mount Carmel through the streets on the third Sunday of July, with the sagra afterwards on Warner Street.

Not all of it is warm. When Italy declared war in June 1940 the internments began, and the Arandora Star left Liverpool on 1 July carrying Italian internees. She was torpedoed the following morning and 446 Italians drowned, a great many of them from those same streets. Their memorial was installed inside St Peter’s in 1960. Afterwards the community also spread west: Lou and Caterina Polledri opened Bar Italia at 22 Frith Street in 1949, and the family runs it still.

Evening lessons, and no journey either way

Almost every London enquiry opens with the same question: do you teach after work? Yes. One-to-one lessons are arranged around your week rather than dropped into a fixed timetable, so if the only hour you can reliably protect is an evening one, that is the hour we use, and none of it depends on you crossing town first.

Lessons run on Microsoft Teams. I send the link, it opens in a browser if you would rather not install anything, and you need a laptop and somewhere reasonably quiet. I teach this way across the whole of the UK, so a work trip or a move out to the commuter belt does not end the lessons. There is more on how online lessons work if you want the detail.

Common questions

What happens in a first lesson?

Before anything is booked we have a short conversation, at no charge, about where you are now and what you actually want Italian for: a wedding in Puglia, a grandparent, an exam, a move. The first lesson is not a test. I find out what you already have by using it, so you will be speaking Italian inside the first hour, badly to begin with, which is exactly as it should be, and I correct as we go instead of saving it all for the end. You will finish knowing what we are working on and in what order. If I am not the right tutor for you, I will say so.

What happens when the beginners’ group finishes?

Three things tend to happen. Some people stop there, having got what they came for — enough to travel with and be understood. Others move to one-to-one at £30 an hour, which is where the real ground gets covered once the basics are in place. A few take the course again on purpose, because the second time through is when the grammar stops being trivia and starts being useful. I will tell you which of the three I think suits you, and then leave it with you.

Could my partner and I learn together?

Yes, and pairs often work better than either person expects. You get a second voice to practise against and someone to be mildly competitive with, which does more for a Tuesday evening than any amount of encouragement from me. The one condition is that you start at roughly the same level — a true beginner and a rusty A-level learner in the same hour means one of you is bored. Ring 07786 107293 and we will work out the arrangement for two.

How will I know whether I am actually getting anywhere?

Not from tests every week. I keep a record of what we have covered, and every so often we spend a whole lesson in Italian and set it against the last one — the difference is usually clearer to me than to you, which is why I say it out loud. The other measure is external and more convincing: understanding a voicemail, ordering without rehearsing the sentence first, following two Italians talking to each other. They arrive in that order.

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