Learn Italian with the News
A stepping stone to real-world language
Watching the news in Italian is a great way to improve your listening skills and widen your vocabulary: news broadcasts offer a variety of words and expressions that are seldom encountered in textbooks, and at the same time they provide a valuable insight into Italy’s culture, politics, and everyday life.
Now, that’s all well and good, but the truth is, you won’t be able to understand much of it unless you already have a good grasp of the language: the speed of the news is usually too fast for a beginner or intermediate learner, and the vocabulary is quite different from everyday language.
That’s how we designed our Learn Italian with the News videos: keeping in mind the needs of beginner and intermediate learners, we offer a selection of news in SLOW ITALIAN, much easier to understand, and we explain key words and recurring expressions to help you develop your vocabulary.
Each video includes English captions and the on-screen transcription of all Italian audio, plus accompanying notes, questions & video transcript.
If you find our videos useful, please SUBSCRIBE to our channel - it's all free! And don't hesitate to leave comments under our videos on YouTube. Thank you!
Watch the videos

Each of the videos listed here is embedded in an individual page where you can also find a PDF with the video transcript. Starting from episode 7 you can also download PDFs with questions & answers, while for videos 1 to 6 questions & answers are included at the end of each video.
- Episode 13 - 31 Mar 2021 - L'emergenza COVID; le candidature agli Oscar 2021; la missione Mars 2020; il Dantedì 2021; la Coppa America di vela.
- Episode 12 - 10 Feb 2021 - Il Capodanno cinese; la crisi di governo e il sistema elettorale italiano.
- Episode 11 - 16 Dec 2020 - Santa Lucia, Natale & Capodanno 2020; online cultural events & entertainment in Italian.
- Episode 10 - 11 Nov 2020 - 2020 US Presidential Election; online cultural events; more art exhibitions
- Episode 9 - 23 Sep 2020 - Venice Film Festival; Viva Dante 2021; current art exhibitions
- Episode 8 - 19 Aug 2020 - Overtourism & undertourism; underrated Italian destinations
- Episode 7 - 22 Jul 2020 - Verona opera festival; Serie A football restart
- Episode 6 - 17 Jun 2020 - Venice before, during & after lockdown
- Episode 5 - 20 May 2020 - Italy reopens: post-lockdown measures
- Episode 4 - 2 Apr 2020 - Report from COVID-19 lockdown
- Episode 3 - 3 Mar 2020 - The spread of COVID-19 in Italy
- Episode 2 - 19 Feb 2020 - COVID-19 update; the new Ferrari SF1000; the Oscars
- Episode 1 - 28 Jan 2020 - Seasonal flu; Federico Fellini; High flood in Venice
We publish a new Learn Italian with the News video every 4-5 weeks. Even if some of the stories presented in older videos are no longer current, you will still be able to learn useful words & expressions that will allow you to understand better the latest news and a variety of different topics, from politics to sports, so make sure to watch them all!