Italian Lessons in Stroud

Prisoners of war from Italy were put to work on Gloucestershire farms in the mid-1940s, and for a few years the language turned up in this county the way it usually does anywhere: spoken by people who were busy doing something else at the time. That is still the honest version of Italian. It is a spoken language first. Adults learn it quickest when they are made to say things out loud early and badly, before they feel ready, with somebody patient on the other end of it. Twenty-odd years of teaching behind me, a PGCE and QTS, a Cambridge CELTA, classes taken through the IB, and it still comes down to talking.

There are two ways in. One-to-one lessons are £30 an hour, online over Microsoft Teams, built around whatever you actually need, whether that is a fortnight in Italy, a grandmother’s language you half remember, or an exam paper with a date on it. Or there is an online beginners’ group; register your interest for the next one. The group is small on purpose, because in a large one the quiet people stay quiet and learn nothing. Stroud is close enough that meeting in person can sometimes be arranged. If you would rather ask a question than book anything, ring 07786 107293.

Why Italian, and why here

Online lessons suit Stroud. It is a town of people who work odd hours and drive home down a long valley in the dark, and a lesson on a laptop at the kitchen table is a lesson you can genuinely keep. In-person can sometimes be arranged here, and I am happy to, but I would not push it. The adults who get somewhere with Italian are not the ones with the most charming arrangement. They are the ones who quietly removed every reason to miss a lesson.

“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 →

The Orpheus pavement lying under a Woodchester churchyard

The oldest Italian thing near Stroud is not a café or a family name. It is a floor. Two miles down the valley at Woodchester lies a Roman villa of some sixty-four rooms and thirteen mosaics, one of the largest found in northern Europe, occupied from the early second century into the late fourth. Its Great Pavement, laid around AD 325, shows Orpheus ringed by birds and beasts, and it is the biggest Roman mosaic in Britain.

The site was known about by 1693, and Samuel Lysons excavated it properly in the 1790s and published what he found. After that it was uncovered every so often and then buried again: 1880, 1890, 1926, 1935, 1951, 1963, and finally 1973, when something like 140,000 people came in seven weeks and the village decided that was quite enough. It is still there under the grass of the churchyard, and it has not been seen since.

I should be straight about the rest. I have found no record of a nineteenth or twentieth-century Italian community settling in Stroud, in the way that Bedford or the Rhondda valleys were shaped by one. Stroud’s Italian life is a smaller and much more recent thing: Sorrento on Russell Street, Grande Italia out at Ebley, Amalfi over in Nailsworth. Good places, but not a migration story, and I would rather tell you that than invent one.

Common questions

How does one week connect to the next?

Each session opens with you speaking, usually about something ordinary, and usually before you feel prepared. New grammar comes in small doses in the middle, tied to something you will use rather than something you will admire. Then we finish with the new material back in your own mouth. The following week starts by revisiting it, so nothing is introduced once and abandoned. Between sessions I ask for very little, perhaps ten minutes of listening. Adults who are given an hour of homework do not do it, and then feel guilty, and then stop coming.

I travel for work and will miss the odd week. Is that a problem?

No. On a one-to-one we simply move the hour, and there is no charge for a lesson we agree to shift. In a group class the others carry on without you, which is the nature of a group, but I will send you what we covered and the phrases you missed, and I will pick you up at the start of the next one rather than leaving you to work it out. One missed week is nothing. Four in a row is worth a conversation about whether one-to-one would suit you better.

Do I need to buy a textbook before I start?

Not a thing. I write my own materials and send them across, because published beginners’ books tend to be built for a classroom of twenty and assume you want the vocabulary in a fixed order. Later on, if you are enjoying yourself, a decent dictionary is worth having and I will tell you which one. Some people like a notebook. That is the entire list. Nobody should be forty pounds down before their first lesson.

Nearby: Gloucester · Cheltenham · Cirencester · Gloucestershire · Dursley