Ti racconto una storiella : insegnare italiano LS tramite le novelle

Abstract

Learning a foreign language is of fundamental importance in today's world. It is key to communicate with other people. “The European Commission fosters multilingualism and language learning and its goal is to have a Europe where everyone is taught at least two languages in addition to their own mother tongue from a very early age"(Pace, 2015a, p.99). Notwithstanding this, Tuffanelli and Ianes (2011) argue that whoever works in schools today, not least the teachers of foreign languages, feels a certain amount of annoyance and discomfort as a result of the great challenges they face in class when it comes to motivate the students, maintain discipline and create/stimulate adequate learning programmes. To overcome such challenges, Pace (2015, p. 101) firmly believes that the foreign language teacher's priority in class should be “to communicate with his students, […] to pass on to his students the love and passion for learning the language” and that one way of doing this is by adapting literature to the language classroom (Pace, 2017b). There are different types of literary texts and ways of how such texts can be used in the foreign language class. Short stories can definitely be a “very influential and effective tool […] in the language classroom for a number of reasons. Motivation, literary appreciation, culture and higher-order thinking are some of the greatest benefits of using short stories to teach a language” (Erkaya, 2005, in Pace, 2017b, p.9). The main aim of this research is to find out if and to what extent the use of short stories or novelle helps in the acquisition of Italian as a foreign language in local schools. The study will also focus on the advantages and disadvantages of using novelle in class and the difficulties that teachers have to overcome when using such a resource in class. This will be done through an online semi-structured interview with 6 teachers of Italian coming from the three sectors of education, namely State, Independent as well as Church Schools. The research will identify to what extent are novelle used in class for the teaching of Italian, how teachers perceive their use in class as well as the advantages and disadvantages of using such literary form in class. Furthermore, 8 lesson plans together with all relevant teaching resources based on the use of novelle, spread over a period of 2 weeks, will be planned and prepared for a Year 8 class.