Cooperative Learning of Italian Literature in the Post-Pandemic Era

Abstract

The paper analyses how cooperative learning can be used in teaching literature, specifically 19th century Italian literature. It presents the results of group activities carried out in October 2022 by students from the Faculty of Letters of the “Babes-Bolyai” University of Cluj-Napoca, with specialisation in Italian A and B. These are students attending the Italian Literature II course, taught in Italian. The participants returned to university (face-to-face didactic activities) only in the spring of 2022, in the second semester of their first year of study at a university level. They spent more than one year of high school during the Covid-19 pandemic (with online school). After having carried out a cooperative activity in the practical course that focused on the study of Italian literature, in groups of 3-4 students, they were given an anonymous questionnaire to express their views on cooperative learning of foreign languages and literatures. The questionnaire contained 7 questions in which the teacher wanted to check whether the students found cooperative learning more effective than the classical methods of learning foreign languages and literatures in the post-pandemic period and how the cooperative activity stimulated their curiosity for Italian literature, especially for reading the novel studied during the practical course.