Reading a short story

It is possible to find on the Internet a great deal of short stories written in Italian by Italians. The advantage of a story compared with a book, is brevity and therefore an immediate satisfaction for your understanding.

How to choose a suitable story

This is the best system to decide whether a story is suitable for you:

• Read the first page quickly (about 3 minutes);
• Assess the degree of understanding of the text (as a percentage more or less 1% or 8% or 30% ...);
• If you think you've understood about  10% or more after a single reading of three minutes, that story is good for you!

If you think you've got less, no problem. It is not time for you to read that text yet. In a while, when you gain more reading experience, it will be different. Try again after a few weeks and perhaps you will find that that story that made you suffer so much is not really that difficult.

Our advice is to read the same page 3 or 4 times quickly and look up no more than 7 words you do not understand in the dictionary. This is an effective and inexpensive (in time) technique that we have developed at Dilit, with appropriate modifications, taken from journalism.

To read a page, 10 minutes or so should do and then you move on to the next page. Thus the ratio between the time spent reading and the general  understanding, is high. If satisfaction grows, confidence in your skills grows as well.

Caution: Do not expect  to understand all the words. It leads to stress and frustration. Your goal is general understanding.

Main websites of short stories in Italian

• www.poesieracconti.it: you can find many different  kinds of stories (fantastic, adventure, fantasy, thrillers, aphorisms, poems and more) by amateurish writers;
• italiano.sismondi.ch › Literature:  SìS, the website of the Italian group of the Lyceum Sismondi (CH), which contains short stories by known or anonymous authors, among  others  Benni,  Buzzati, Fenoglio, Saviano, Meneghello;
• balbruno.altervista.org: short stories by contemporary Italian and foreign classical authors (in good translation);
• www.fabiolentini.it/racconti: tales by the Sicilian writer Fabio Lentini;
• www.poesie.reportonline.it: tales by amateur and professional writers, about Italians, for Italians. On the same website: poems, movie quotes, proverbs, aphorisms and more.

And now ... just read! Try it to believe it.