Life at School and College

Saying where things are

You met the names of school subjects in the studies module. This one is about the school itself: the rooms, the people and the day. The vocabulary is straightforward and most of it will look familiar. The part that costs marks is smaller and easier to miss. Almost every sentence in this topic says where something is or where someone goes, and Italian does not use one word for that. Some places take a bare in, and others take a joined to an article. Get that right and a simple sentence about the canteen reads as Italian rather than as English with Italian words in it.

Places in a school

Six places, written as bare nouns. The word for the word the comes later, because it is part of the grammar point.

Match the place

Which room is it

Which Italian word means the canteen?

• mensa
• segreteria
• biblioteca
• palestra

Bare in, or a with the article

Both columns are correct Italian. The difficulty is that English gives you no clue which one a place takes, so these are worth learning as whole phrases rather than as a rule you apply.

People and things at school

The small word that changes

Here is the useful truth about this. There is no reliable rule that tells you which places take a bare in and which take a joined to an article, and looking for one wastes time. What works is learning the phrase whole. When you learn palestra, learn in palestra. When you learn mensa, learn alla mensa. Then the correct form arrives with the word rather than having to be worked out under pressure. In a speaking or writing task this is the difference between a sentence that flows and one that stalls while you decide.

Where the library is

You want to say that the library is near the gym. The Italian is la biblioteca è vicino alla palestra. Why is alla used here rather than a bare in?

• Because vicino a is followed by the article, and a and la join into alla
• Because palestra is a place that always takes alla in every sentence
• Because alla is used whenever the noun is feminine
• Either would be correct here, since both mean near

School in a paragraph

The Italian for the gym is _____ and the Italian for the library is _____. To say you are in the classroom you use a bare in, giving in _____. To say you are at the canteen the a joins the article, giving _____ mensa. The person in charge of the school is the _____.

Build the sentence about place

Put these four pieces in order to build la biblioteca è vicino alla palestra, meaning the library is near the gym.

• la biblioteca
• è
• vicino
• alla palestra

A description, marked

Question: write two or three sentences in Italian describing your school. Model answer: La mia scuola è grande. Studio in classe la mattina e mangio alla mensa. Il cortile è vicino alla palestra. Look at what earns the marks. Two different place expressions are used, one with a bare in and one with a joined alla, which shows you know they are not interchangeable. The phrases are used whole rather than assembled, so nothing has been got wrong in the joining. And three short accurate sentences beat two longer ones with a preposition wrong, because the preposition is exactly what this topic is assessing.

Which preposition is wrong

Three of these sentences use the place expression correctly. Select the ONE that does not.

• Studio in biblioteca ogni giorno.
• Mangio in mensa con i miei compagni.
• Il cortile è vicino alla palestra.
• La lezione di storia è in classe.

Finding your way round

You are writing a short description of your school day in Italian. Work through the choices.

• You want to say you study in the classroom. Which form do you need?
• You now want to say you eat at the canteen. What changes?
• You cannot remember whether a place takes in or a. What is the best habit?
• You have room for one more sentence. What would add most?

Write about your school

Write three or four sentences in Italian describing your school. Use only words from this module.

• Name two places in your school
• Say what you do in one of them, using a bare in
• Say what you do in another, using a joined to the article
• Say where one place is in relation to another, using vicino