MIT Teaches You How to Speak Italian & Cook Italian Food All at Once (Free Online Course)

At MIT, Dr. Pao­la Rebus­co usu­al­ly teach­es physics to fresh­men. But, on behalf of the MIT Exper­i­men­tal Study Group, Rebus­co has devised an appeal­ing course â€” Speak Ital­ian with Your Mouth Full â€” where she com­bines teach­ing two things many peo­ple love: learn­ing to speak Ital­ian and cook­ing Ital­ian food. The course sum­ma­ry reads:

The par­tic­i­pants in this sem­i­nar will dive into learn­ing basic con­ver­sa­tion­al Ital­ian, Ital­ian cul­ture, and the Mediter­ranean diet. Each class is based on the prepa­ra­tion of a deli­cious dish and on the bite-sized acqui­si­tion of parts of the Ital­ian lan­guage and cul­ture. A good diet is not based on recipes only, it is also root­ed in healthy habits and in cul­ture. At the end of the sem­i­nar the par­tic­i­pants will be able to cook some healthy and tasty recipes and to under­stand and speak basic Ital­ian.

As Rebus­co explains in a short video, this course has the advan­tage of mak­ing the lan­guage lessons a lit­tle less abstract. It gives stu­dents a chance to apply what they’ve learned (new vocab­u­lary words, pro­nun­ci­a­tions, etc.) in a fun, prac­ti­cal con­text.

Above, we start you off with the first lan­guage les­son in the sem­i­nar. It begins where all basic cours­es start — with how to say your name. Below, you can watch the class learn to cook fresh pas­ta. Along the way, the course also teach­es stu­dents how to make espres­sorisot­tohome­made piz­zabruschet­ta, and bis­cot­ti. Lec­tures for the course can be found on the MIT web site, YouTube and iTunesSpeak Ital­ian with Your Mouth Full also appears in our col­lec­tion of Free For­eign Lan­guage Lessons and 1200 Free Cours­es Online. Buon Appeti­to!

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Comments (10)
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  • bonniemelielo says:

    over 10 years of study­ing Ital­ian and I final­ly got a won­der­ful expla­na­tion of accent marks and open and closed vow­els!! Bra­va!

  • Cristiano says:

    Thanksn to MIT and to Dr Rebus­co to remind all pro­fes­sion­al teach­ers in the nworld how almost every­where (even at MIT!!!) “if you speak Ital­ian you ncan be a teacher!”. The method and the­o­ries of Dr Rebus­co are medieval nand against all the basic prin­ci­ples of lan­guage teach­ing. It is clear nenough from the first min­utes of the video that she has NEVER stud­ied ton be a teacher, she ignores the the­o­ry and she has got no expe­ri­ence at nall. I’d like now to ask her and MIT: can I come to your Insti­tute and nteach maths, please? I can count up to 1.000.000, I garan­tee you, my nteacher a high-school can con­firm.

    • Caterina says:

      I agree with Cris­tiano. Dr Rebus­co is nice, but she has NO IDEA of what lan­guage teach­ing means.nI don’t like to do this kind of com­ments, but it is impor­tant to defend those pro­fes­sion­als who are real­ly trained for this job.nEvery pro­fes­sion needs prepa­ra­tion and can­not be extem­po­rized: why does MIT not con­sid­er those poor stu­dents? Thay deserve a teacher who has stud­ied to be a teacher.

    • Sara says:

      BRAVO!!!!!!! It’s a SHAME!!

  • Marc says:

    I am pret­ty sure that this is sup­posed to be fun. Not that class­es that employ cur­rent ped­a­gogy are not. How­ev­er, this a class(not sure is class is the appro­pri­ate title here) that com­bines two things and from what I’ve observed her stu­dents ARE learn­ing how to speak and how to cook. And they are hav­ing fun and appre­ci­at­ing the cul­ture and cui­sine. It should not take the place of Ital­ian 101 but is that the aim??

  • Amy says:

    Flash freez­ing the porcetta makes it eas­i­er to dice.

  • Renata Salini says:

    Great job! My guess: this way the stu­dents will remem­ber some use­ful Ital­ian words and maybe get inter­est­ed in gram­mar, lit­er­a­ture and Ital­ian his­to­ry!

  • Ric says:

    Fail.… fail… fail…

    What hap­pens when edu­ca­tion­al resources are by sub­ject mat­ter experts and pro­duc­tion ama­teurs.

    The sound qual­i­ty in these videos is appalling!!

    And for lan­guage lessons that is an unfor­giv­able prob­lem that would have been instant­ly spot­ted by any­one with rudi­men­ta­ry pro­duc­tion expe­ri­ence.

    Maybe if you are a very young per­son with no hear­ing dam­age what­so­ev­er.

    In places you can bare­ly hear what is being said in Eng­lish.

    This is why online learn­ing can­not con­tin­ue to fol­low the do-it-your­self sub­ject-mat­ter-expert-as-pro­duc­er pro­duc­tion mod­el.

  • Meme says:

    I wish i can learn Ital­ian lan­guage

  • lonah Joy says:

    DO i get a cer­tifi­cate?
    i wish o enroll

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