Italian Language Teaching Research Articles

Italian at Public Schools: Historical Conflicts in the State of Santa Catarina

This paper focuses on the teaching of Italian language in public schools in some cities of the state of Santa Catarina in Brazil by framing it into the context of Brazilian linguistic diversity. In the last decades, cities founded by Italian immigrants that arrived in Brazil during the XIX century promulgated laws that assured the inclusion of the Italian language in the curriculum of their public school system, even though the majority of the immigrants spoke Italian dialects. The article, then, besides dealing with the linguistic repertoire of the immigrants, shall also try to analyze the linguistic oppression that those immigrants were subjected to during the Estado Novo period of Brazilian politics, seeking to access the consequences of that oppression for the new generations. The chief aim of the paper is, therefore, to problematize the relationship between linguistic oppression and prejudices still in place regarding the use of Italian dialects, trying to put into question the validity of the teaching of standardized Italian in communities formed mainly by dialectophones.

Issues of Using Phraseologisms in Italian Language Teaching: a Linguoculturological and Linguodidactic Study

Phraseological units are considered a product of folk art. As an important branch of linguistics, the main focus of phraseology is on the study of the nature of phraseologies and their categorical signs, as well as on determining the laws of the use of phraseologies in speech. The most important problem of phraseology is to differentiate and distinguish phraseologisms from word combinations that are formed in speech (that is, not ready in advance) and to determine the signs of phraseologies on this basis.

Challenges and opportunities for teaching Italian as a second language: A case study at the University of Toronto Mississauga

This article analyses the current condition of teaching Italian abroad and the ways in which second-language programmes can engage learners and meet their educational goals. While we are aware of the need for systematic action amongst various actors to ensure the future of Italian-language teaching, we choose to focus on the concept of Experiential Learning (EL). EL is a didactic action (i.e. a linguistic policy) which can be directly implemented into university courses or programmes and represents an innovative method of teaching Italian as a second language. Research on the theme of EL was conducted on Italian L2 courses at the University of Toronto Mississauga and involved instructors and students from various departments. These results lay the foundation for the creation of concrete educational policies, consistent with international literature on the action-oriented approach (CEFR, ACTFL), and for the ‘power of feasibility’ of individual classes (and individual teachers) of L2.

Italian Politics and Culture from Fascism to Postwar Democracy in the Life and Work of Uguccione Ranieri di Sorbello (1906–1969)

Italian Politics and Culture from Fascism to Postwar Democracy in the Life and Work of Uguccione Ranieri di Sorbello (1906–1969)

Jogos de linguagem e jogos de movimento: deslocamentos lúdicos na aula de língua italiana

O objetivo deste estudo é socializar duas atividades lúdicas de ensino de língua italiana que podem ser adaptadas para outros contextos de ensino. As dinâmicas baseiam-se, principalmente, em jogos linguísticos e jogos de movimento que permitem ao aluno deslocar-se em sala de aula, como, por exemplo, na atividade de desenvolvimento oral Caccia al tesoro (Caça ao tesouro), na qual o aluno deve movimentar-se pela sala em busca de colegas que preencham requisitos orientado por uma série de perguntas lúdicas e nonsense. Atividades de movimento como essa estimulam, além do uso da língua oral e da aquisição de vocabulário, possibilidades de entrosamento e (re)conhecimento de pares no microuniverso da sala de aula. A outra proposta é denominada Il sasso nello stagno (A pedra no pântano) e configura-se como a produção criativa de acrósticos. Essas práticas lúdicas são direcionadas a crianças a partir do Ensino Fundamental II e também a adultos, e se baseiam nos preceitos da Gramática da fantasia (Grammatica della fantasia, 1973), de Gianni Rodari. São jogos que promovem o estranhamento e estimulam a criatividade. Os alunos interagem, refletem sobre a língua, brincam, apre(e)ndem e as propostas didáticas fluem de uma maneira mais espontânea.

Reflecting on didactics: an improvement cycle in the subject “Methodology and teaching of Italian language and literature”

Reflecting on didactics: an improvement cycle in the subject “Methodology and teaching of Italian language and literature”

The Linguistic Integration of Refugees in Italy

The creation of laws regarding the linguistic integration of migrants has contributed to the change in Italian language teaching, which has had to adapt its materials and methodology to migrants. However, the specific case of refugees has not been specifically assessed, with the exception of experimentation with the Council of Europe toolkit for refugees. This paper aimed to study the linguistic integration of adult refugees in Italy by conducting an ethnography through participant observation and semi-structured interviews between Italian language teachers and refugees. The results of this work show both the teachers’ perceptions of the refugees’ linguistic integration and the refugees’ perceptions of linguistic integration practice. The conclusions highlight the need for more hours of Italian language courses as well as lessons based on specific integration needs. Moreover, this study emphasizes that the integration practice itself implies language learning. A final consideration is made concerning the current integration situation of refugees in Italy.

Exploration on Italian Language Teaching by “We-Media” in the Mobile Internet Era:Taking "Himalaya FM" App as an example

In the background of the mobile internet era, “We-Media” technologies are changing the traditional information transmission mode. The author chose the online mobile audio sharing platform “Himalaya FM” App that develops the fastest as the carrier, and conducts new exploration into Italian language teaching practices based on the connectivism learning theories, theories of practice, and contradiction theories. According to data analysis between 2014-2018, this paper puts forward Italian language teaching suggestions to further promote more professional, systematic and scientific integration of Italian language teaching and “We-Media” technologies.

An Experience of Integrated E-Learning in the Teaching of the Italian Language for Immigrated People

The article discusses the planning and carrying out of a research project concerning the teaching of the Italian language for immigrated people. First of all, the dimensions of the phenomenon of immigration from non-EU countries in Italy and in Europe is reported (mostly from Northern and Central Africa and the East), and its evolution during last years is described, with a special attention to the change in the policy of reception and hospitality. Secondly, the theoretical framework for the virtual learning environment to be adopted to support the teaching of Italian language is highlighted. At last the planning of the teaching activity is analyzed and the features of the didactic process are discussed. The experience the author aims at carrying out can be considered a study case, but a comparison with more traditional experiences is made, and the implications for a good inclusion of the immigrants is analyzed.

Viaggi di immagini e parole. La didattica dell’italiano nella scuola primaria con gli albi illustrati e i silent books

Picturebooks (and silent books, with images only and without words) are children’s books commonly considered suitable only for young children of pre-school age or in the earliest years of schooling. For this reason, picturebooks are mostly neglected in teaching in higher educational stages. Nevertheless, the educational potential of picturebooks is considerable, especially in the later years of primary school. For example, in Italian language teaching, they can be extraordinary tools for planning didactic projects that allow instructors to integrate the teaching/learning of all linguistic skills and of metalinguistic reection, which are the main elements in the curricula related to Italian language teaching in Italian-speaking countries and contexts. The article aims to show the validity of the above claim by establishing a possible classication of picturebooks into six distinct types and by describing some didactic projects and activities developed in primary schools in Canton Ticino (Italian Switzerland). Focusing on the pleasure of reading engaging stories and on motivation, picturebooks enable teachers to pursue ambitious and challenging goals, such as creating one or more new picturebooks inspired by the one read initially or transposing a picturebook into a theatre script. At the same time, picturebooks enable students to develop their speaking, listening, reading, and writing skills.

Glottotecnologie didattiche per i migranti L’italiano fra le altre lingue nel progetto L-Pack (Citizenship Language Pack for Migrants in Europe)

Teaching languages to migrants through ICT L-Pack Project for Italian and other languages (Citizenship Language Pack for Migrants in Europe) The most recent trends in technology and the internet, commonly called Web 2.0., have determined new concepts in teaching and learning that involve autonomy, multimodality and flexibility. New approaches to ‘knowledge by technology’ are changing both teachers’ and learners’ roles, responding to their different aims and needs. At the same time, nearly 4 million people are presently involved in massive migration processes all over Europe, coming either from outside Europe or from another EU member state. The EU policies on migrants state the importance of a basic knowledge of the host country’s language, history and institutions for an effective integration process, and EU governments are expected to contribute to this aim. This paper describes the European Project ‘L-PACK: Citizenship Language Pack For Migrants in Europe’ (2011-2016), whose main aim consisted in developing a series of internet video texts, accompanied with materials and resources to lead adult migrants to A2 level (according to QCER levels scale) in different EU languages. The project has been developed in two main stages. In the first part of the programme, called L-Pack 1, from 2011 to 2013, the languages were Italian, Spanish, German, Lithuanian, Greek and Czech. In the second part, called L-Pack 2 extended, from 2014 to 2016, the project added English and French and was integrated with new resources and tools. The L-PACK course, which consists of 60 short video dialogues from everyday life, supported by comprehension activities and linguistic explanation and rules, is totally free and available through Youtube, Wikibooks and Soundcloud. The dedicated website http://www.l-pack.eu was visited by 120.000 users from 146 countries in the period 2011-2016. L-Pack teaching materials have also been used by teachers in classroom activities. The authors analyze and evaluate the results of the L-Pack Project, from pilot to dissemination, in different learning contexts both in situ and through e-learning. This is carried out on the basis of surveys concerning the project as a whole and in particular its use in Italian language teaching classes for migrants in Italy.

Ipermedialità nella didattica delle lingue moderne: una ricerca

Oggetto di questo articolo è un’indagine svolta presso alcuni istituti che insegnano lingua italiana a San Paolo nell’ambito di una ricerca che si propone di motivare l’utilizzo di un ipermedia nella didattica delle lingue moderne. L’ipermedia è indicato come uno strumento importante in ambito glottodidattico, visto che si basa su un approccio umanistico e trae ispirazione da una visione socio-costruttivista del contesto scuola. L’ipotesi di uno strumento ipermediale nella glottodidattica garantirebbe duttilità, dinamicità e apertura che potrebbe così essere usato in tutte le classi in maniera varia e differenziata. Abbiamo svolto la ricerca in tre istituti di San Paolo (Brasile) e in uno di Venezia, cercando di investigare quali possano essere i punti di contatto tra l’uso effettivo delle tecnologie in ambito glottodidattico e le preferenze di uso. Ne presentiamo qui i dati emersi nei loro punti salienti in quanto la ricerca ha portato a una raccolta di informazioni molto consistente.

Gender Issues and “Promiscuo” Nouns in Italian: Possible Non-Grammatical Explanation1 of Some Grammar Problems in Italian Language Teaching in China

“Promiscuo” nouns are a particular grammatical phenomenon in Italian. They cannot be explained from a purely grammatical perspective. In this case, any traditional teaching method will hit a bottleneck as it restricts Chinese learners’ thinking and understanding about Italian language and culture. This paper explores the formative causes of “promiscuo” nouns from the non-grammatical perspectives of nature, society, history, culture and other aspects and draws up a series of practical analytic methods that may help to find the non-grammatical interpretation of some grammar problems in Italian language teaching in China. It also serves as a different avenue or platform for Chinese students to have a comprehensive and dynamic view on Italian language, culture and society.

Reflexões sobre os 40 anos de estudos italianos: por uma educação linguística democrática

O artigo apresenta as “Dez teses por uma Educacao Linguistica Democratica”, documento elaborado na decada de 1970 por linguistas italianos com foco no ensino de lingua italiana em contexto de mudanca, e repercussoes desse documento que completa quarenta anos. A acao que resultou nas “Dez teses” esta vinculada ao Giscel (Grupo de Intervencao e Estudo no Campo da Educacao Linguistica [ Gruppo di Intervento e Studio nel Campo dell’Educazione Linguistica ]), que concentra pesquisas em educacao linguistica no pais. Neste artigo, faz-se o resgate da publicacao das teses, o levantamento de estudos que analisam as repercussoes do documento e das novas propostas para o ensino de lingua em uma Italia com “novos italianos”. Analisadas em sua essencia, as “dez teses” podem contribuir com os estudos brasileiros em busca de uma educacao linguistica que seja, efetivamente, democratica. Palavras-chave: Educacao linguistica, linguistica italiana, ensino de lingua.

Mapeamento dos municípios com ensino de italiano em escolas públicas

O objetivo deste artigo é apresentar um mapeamento dos municípios do Brasil que possuem ensino de italiano em escolas públicas, mas primeiramente tratamos dos documentos oficiais que regulamentam o papel das línguas estrangeiras na Educação Básica. Embora tenhamos realizado um levantamento da situação em cada estado do Brasil, reconhecemos que os dados obtidos podem não cobrir toda dimensão territorial de nosso país. A análise dos dados nos permite afirmar, primeiramente, que há um conhecimento parcial, por parte de órgãos e instituições, acerca da realidade do ensino de italiano em contexto público; em segundo lugar, que, de forma surpreendentemente positiva, o ensino de italiano está presente não apenas nas escolas públicas no sudeste e no sul, mas também em outras regiões do país

Alcune considerazioni sull’uso della traduzione nella didattica d’italiano come lingua straniera

For many years, the translation has not been recommended and has even been banned in language teaching and learning. Recently, it seems to regain some success at this field. In this article we briefly analyze how the role of this technique has changed throughout the years within the major language teaching theories so as to get to the reasons for its reassessment we can observe nowadays. Finally, we present some considerations on how we can use activities based on translation in the classroom with a particular regard to Italian language teaching to adult learners who are native speakers of Polish.

As marcas da subjetividade no prefácio de um livro didático para o ensino de Língua Italiana

Our interest, in this paper, is to investigate what effects of sense can be inferred from the presence of the marks of person and time found in the preface of a textbook aimed at the teaching of Italian language, in the courses offered by Associacao Italiana de Santa Maria (AISM), Brasil. This book is: Lingua e Vita D’Italia (1981), whose authors are Katerin Katerinov and Maria Clotilde Boriosi Katerinov. Also, we intend to analyze some adverbs and adjectives as elements of subjectivity, seeking to identify the possible senses they produce. We start from Emile Benveniste's enunciation theory for the analytical work.

El italiano aplicado al canto como destreza

This paper attempts to shed some light on the specific teaching of Italian language applied to singing. We must admit its increasing demand on most Lyrical schools or High Schools of Music all over the world. Needless to say there are no proper teacher-training centers to help teachers acquire and develop new methods and techniques on teaching languages for musical purposes. All other fields in language teaching are fully covered with ample research on every specific subject: economics, engineering, medicine, law, etc. As far as music is concerned, there is a lack of investigation on the linguistic abilities, viz. phonology and phonetics, a prospective singer will need when performing an aria in an opera or in an oratorio. Up to now, our teaching activity is only based on our own experience. In this essay we propose a methological approach in order to provide an academic frame to the teaching of Italian language applied to singing. And this is what we have been doing for several years at the «Escuela Superior de Canto» in Madrid.

Medicine, Society and Faith in the Ancient and Medieval Worlds (review)

Reviews 109 An article on Pirandello's complex relationship with Germany by M . C. Mauceri (pp. 180-192), and a study in Italian on Italy's great contemporary dialect poet by Silvio Trambaiolo close the literary section of the volume. Trambaiolo writes on Zanzotto's dialect poems Mistierbi (1984) with the insight derived from seeing the punctuation and lexical variants in a manuscript version of 1979, which was shown to him by a w o m a n w h o had received a dedicated copy of these verses. Space does not here permit a detailed exposition of the three essays on language that close the volume. Antonia Rubino's article concerning three generations of Sicilian Australians living in contact in the immigrant situation, points out once again h o w language shift is rapid even within a household of nominal Italians. Months of tape recordings show that immigrant Sicilian speakers tend to defer to the subject matter choices of their children or parents, and hence to a preferred linguistic vehicle (pp. 209-237), which is always the language of the receiving country. P. Marmini and N. Zanardi close this volume in honour of a former head of Italian by illustrating just h o w far Second Language Acquisition research has progressed since the Italian language teaching, for example, of Professor Frederick May's generation (pp. 238-248). Nicoletta Zanardi, also of the Sydney department, explains h o w their locally produced Quintetto Italiano, using thematic passages from the Italian media, meets new classroom needs and responds to course assessment requests by the concerned client, the student learner, whether of non-Italian background or not. In sum, this volume is a sophisticated tribute to a Pirandellian scholar, a collector of Futurist whimsies (as shown by his 'Dialogic Hilarity and Body-Madness' at pp. 9-37) and the most challenging setter of undergraduate exam papers that can have been produced in our field. Bruce Merry University of Kuwait Amundsen, Darrel W., Medicine, Society and Faith in the Ancient and Medie Worlds, Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore and London, 1996; cloth; pp. xvi, 391; R.R.P. US$39.95. In Medicine, Society, and Faith in the Ancient and Medieval Worlds, Darre Amundsen draws together eleven essays, nine of them previously published from 1977 through to 1995, and a further two, 'Body, Soul, and Physician' and 'The Moral Stance of the Earliest Syphilographers, 1495-1505', written especially for this volume. In general terms, he investigates the history of medical ethics, focusing on the 'tensions and compatibilities' between medicine and religion. The introductory chapter, 'Body, Soul, and Physician', argues that religion and medicine share the goal of providing for man's (sic) well-being. The 110 Reviews relationship between the two may take four forms: medicine is subsumed under religion, for example, in medieval Europe; religion and medicine are partially separated, as in classical Greece; medicine and religion are completely separate, the current dominant legal position of the West; and religion is subsumed under medicine, an approach Amundsen suggests is rapidly gaining ground in the modern USA. The negotiation of these boundaries, and the associated issue of respect for human life, form the balance of the chapter. In an analysis which moves from the tenets of the church fathers to the form of the medieval 'death chamber', Amundsen outlines the difficulties of physicians obligated to do everything possible to cure a patient, and also inevitably present at death, however useless their presence. Chapters Two to Six focus on the classical and early Christian worlds. Readers familiar with the current popular discourse around the 'Hippocratic Oath' will be surprised to discover that some of its tenets are not typical either of the Hippocratic Corpus or of the realities of classical medical practice. In fact, ethics such as 'the duty to prolong' life probably originated in the later middle ages. Amundsen discusses the unlicensed nature of ancient medical practitioners and the lack of universal adherence to a specified code of ethics, and cautions that it is 'probably irresponsible' to speak of any universal ancient attitudes. For example, some authors, such as Plato and Aristotle, saw the case of defective newborn children in terms of the...