Loecsen First Contact is a free A1 Italian course for complete beginners. Its current program organizes 17 practical lessons into six levels, from the first greetings to travel, food, relationships and unexpected situations. The emphasis is on listening to complete expressions and reusing them instead of memorizing isolated vocabulary.
The course estimates 36-59 hours of work, although you can divide it into sessions of 5-15 minutes. Audio, sentence-building activities, quizzes and pronunciation practice let you revisit the same expression in several ways before using it independently.
Six levels from first words to useful interactions
| Level | Situations | Lessons |
|---|---|---|
| 1. The first words | Greet, respond and start learning | Essentials, Conversation, Learning |
| 2. Finding your way | Identify colours, quantities and times | Colours, Numbers, Time tracking |
| 3. Getting by while travelling | Move around and ask for practical help | Taxi, Transportation, Beach |
| 4. At the table and hotel | Order, choose and manage accommodation | Restaurant, Bar, Hotel |
| 5. Opening up to others | Talk about people and feelings | Family, Feelings, Parting |
| 6. Interactions | Respond when plans or situations change | In case of trouble, Looking for someone |
The order is useful for a traveller, but it also builds a basic conversational foundation. The first two levels supply essential words and questions; the middle levels place them in concrete settings; the final levels require more flexible responses.
How one expression becomes active practice
Each lesson can be studied as a short cycle:
- Listen once and identify the situation before reading the translation.
- Repeat the complete sentence with the same rhythm as the recording.
- Rebuild or recognize the expression in the interactive activity.
- Change one detail so the sentence matches your own situation.
- Return to missed expressions in the quiz before opening another lesson.
This approach works especially well with requests and routine phrases. After learning an expression for ordering, for example, replace the drink or food while keeping the sentence pattern. The goal is to make a small number of useful structures easier to retrieve.
A route for short daily sessions
- Spend the first session listening to one lesson and selecting five expressions.
- Use the next session to repeat and rebuild those expressions.
- Record a two-line exchange that combines at least two of them.
- Complete the quiz and note only the phrases that still cause hesitation.
- Review them the following day before continuing within the same level.
The speech-recognition feature currently works in Chrome, but it is optional. The recordings and activities remain usable in other modern browsers, so pronunciation can also be checked by recording yourself and comparing both versions.
Where First Contact ends
This is a practical introductory path rather than a detailed grammar course. It is suitable if you want survival Italian, an audio-led starting point or structured travel vocabulary. Loecsen lists a certificate as planned, so no completed certificate should be expected at present. After the six levels, continue with broader A1 grammar and more open conversation rather than repeating only fixed phrases.