Hi everyone,

I've been doing Italian for just over a year now. Exclusively reading and listening, mostly on Lingq and mostly every day for at least half an hour. I'm at 17861 words as of today. And I'm about a quarter of the way through my second novel.

Anyway, I had been confidently (and sometimes not so confidently) focusing on input exclusively, until last Thursday.

I was in a low pressure type of conversation with an Italian guy I know and mentioned in passing that I had been studying Italian, but that I hadn't had the chance to have a conversation yet, so he just casually switched to Italian.

What he said was something basic. But I understood. So I responded and added a little more info so he could see I was comfortable enough continuing.

That then turned into a ten minute conversation about the Italian community in our town and their Facebook group and how I could use it to find conversation partners, but how he wasn't a member of it because he's a doctor and doesn't want people to start coming to him for medical advice when he's not treating them etc...

It was really cool. Like jumping into a whole new language just like that.

Of course Italians proximity to languages I already speak (French and Spanish) will have helped, so I'm not sure I could do the same thing in German for example, but still, it was really cool, and has definitely proven to me that I'm on the right track