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A box of memories
A few days ago, I was looking through my box of memories and found myself holding some old souvenirs, like a ticket to enter the Tower of London, some London Underground travel cards, and a map of an English museum. As I looked at them, I realised once again just how perfectly my life has been divided between two countries. One piece of my heart in Italy, the other in the United Kingdom.
And, in the end, perhaps this is the best way to understand who I am today and where Parla Italiano comes from.
Between Italy and England
I was born and raised in Italy, at the top of Lake Como, surrounded by nature, family, and traditions. Italy is the place of my roots, my mother tongue, the flavours and gestures that instantly make me feel at home. But shortly after graduating, I made a choice that changed everything: I moved to London. I didn’t have a clear plan, I didn’t know how long I would stay, and that time turned into more than twenty years of life.
In London, I followed my initial professional path, which was completely different from what I do today. I worked in the City, in a fast-paced, international, competitive world. It was a formative period, full of challenges and opportunities, but inside me a clear feeling was growing: my true passion wasn’t there. Every time I explained something with enthusiasm, I felt a spark that wasn’t present in my “official” work.
The passion for teaching
That’s how I began chasing that spark.
Leaving a stable career to reinvent yourself isn’t easy, but it was the best decision of my life. I started teaching Italian, and I immediately realised I wanted a methodology. So I got my first certification to teach a foreign language, began studying teaching methods, observed how people really learn, and experimented with—and adjusted—everything that didn’t work. And the more I taught, the more I realised that I had finally found my place.
There’s another thing that transformed the way I teach: I learned English as an adult myself.
I know what it feels like to feel stuck.
I know what it’s like to understand everything “on paper” but still be unable to speak.
I know what it’s like to look at a text and wonder if one day it will really be possible to feel comfortable in another language.
The day I passed the Cambridge C2 with excellent results was wonderful, of course… but what I carry with me isn’t the certificate: it’s the journey to get there. The difficulties, the frustration, the small daily victories. All of this now allows me to put myself in my students’ shoes in a much more natural way
The uniqueness of English-speaking students
This is why, when I started teaching Italian, I realised that English-speaking students face very specific challenges. Certain sounds, certain verb tenses, certain ways of expressing ideas. I began cataloguing them, studying them, and creating materials designed specifically for English speakers.
And that’s how, little by little, Parla Italiano was born.
And this is where an essential part of my work comes in—one I want to share with you in more detail: I want to get to know my students, understand how they learn, and offer them courses that help them achieve what they want.
For me, teaching isn’t just about using a textbook: it’s about listening. Every person learns differently, comes with a different background, and has different goals.
I love observing how their relationship with Italian changes: what blocks them, what lights them up. I love talking with them, understanding what motivates them, what challenges them, what makes them smile when a sentence finally “works.”
It’s from this ongoing dialogue that my courses are born. Not generic programmes, but flexible paths, built around what students really need to feel more confident, more fluent, and freer to speak.
Over the past twenty years, I have built, dismantled, and rebuilt courses, activities, and programmes based on a fundamental principle: to learn a language, you have to speak it. Speak from the very beginning, even when it’s imperfect, even when it’s scary, even when you’re searching for the right words. I always say: theory is important, but it’s practice that makes a sentence truly yours.
Parla Italiano “di nome e di fatto”
Today, Parla Italiano, our school, is the culmination of everything I’ve learned from living between two cultures, studying languages as an adult, teaching thousands of students, and experimenting every day with new ways to make Italian clearer, more human, and more accessible.
And every time I meet a new class—even online!—I rediscover that spark that brought me here.
If you’re not one of our students yet, book a trial lesson with me here.
