L'italiano neostandard : forme accettabili o inaccettabili nella didattica dell'italiano L2?

Abstract

This research examines a particular area of sociolinguistics which is relevant to the teaching of Italian as a second language. The distinction between spoken and written language has important implications in the field of language varieties. A number of short sentences in Italian, taken from a test published by Cattana e Nesci (2000) were presented to all teachers of Italian in local state schools. These sentences are normally acceptable in the spoken variety but not necessarily in the written one. The first objective set out by this research is to find out whether teachers differ in their approaches in correcting the phrases on the basis of the following variables: gender, age, school they teach in, the students they teach, teaching experience in Italian and qualifications. The second objective is to shed light, on the basis of the data collected, on whether there is a trend to accept forms used in colloquial Italian even in written tasks. The data was analysed using SPSS. Results show that there are no statistically significant differences in the way teachers correct the phrases, independently of the different variables examined. Also, the general trend when correcting such phrases is to take into consideration the context in which such phrases are used. Clearly, whilst certain forms of spoken Italian are well accepted even in the written variety, others are still perceived as errors by the vast majority of teachers.