GCSE Italian: Holidays and Travel Revision Guide

Key vocabulary

• le vacanze — holidays
• il treno / l'aereo / la macchina / l'autobus / la nave — train/plane/car/bus/ship
• l'Italia, la Francia, la Spagna, l'Inghilterra — Italy, France, Spain, England
• la spiaggia — beach
• l'albergo — hotel
• il passaporto — passport
• fare le valigie — to pack the suitcases
• prenotare — to book
• visitare — to visit
• viaggiare — to travel

Grammar point: the passato prossimo

The passato prossimo is used to talk about completed actions in the past, similar to the English "I visited" or "I have visited". It is formed with the present tense of an auxiliary verb (avere or essere) plus the past participle of the main verb.

Regular past participles: -are verbs end in -ato (visitare → visitato), -ere verbs end in -uto (potere → potuto), -ire verbs end in -ito (dormire → dormito).

Avere or essere?

Most verbs use avere: Ho visitato Roma — "I visited Rome". Ho prenotato un albergo — "I booked a hotel". A group of verbs of movement or state (andare, venire, partire, arrivare, uscire, tornare, stare, essere) use essere instead, and their past participle must agree with the subject in gender and number, like an adjective: Sono andato in Italia (a boy/man says this) but Sono andata in Italia (a girl/woman says this). In the plural: Siamo andati in vacanza (we went on holiday).

Building holiday sentences

Combine the passato prossimo with time expressions for a strong answer: L'estate scorsa sono andato in Spagna con la mia famiglia. Ho visitato molti musei e ho nuotato in mare — "Last summer I went to Spain with my family. I visited a lot of museums and I swam in the sea".

Common mistakes

• Using "ho" with an essere verb, e.g. saying "ho andato" instead of "sono andato/a".
• Forgetting to make the past participle agree with the subject after essere, e.g. a girl writing "sono andato" instead of "sono andata".
• Using the present tense instead of the passato prossimo when describing something that already happened.