The language of the Italian media and its contribution towards the spontaneous acquisition and formal learning of Italian in Malta

Abstract

Research carried out in order to verify Maltese State and Church Secondary School students' aural comprehension of words and phrases/sentences selected from Italian television programmes, as well as their oral proficiency in the language. A series of words, phrases/sentences and oral tests were given to the subjects to obtain the said information. Results of these tests are then compared to others included in dissertations carried out locally in order to verify if any progress was registered by the said students who had already been given the above-mentioned tests at Primary level. As such, results are analysed in terms of age, sex, school of attendance, hours of exposure to the language of the Italian media and number of years of formal study of the language. Amongst the subjects included in the research, a number never studied Italian formally, and consequently could be referred to in order to put forward considerations regarding spontaneous acquisition of Italian via exposure to the language transmitted through the media. The above information was examined by carrying out a quantitative analysis and by elaborating on the results obtained in this dissertation in the light of the foreign and local literature in the field. A linguistic analysis is also carried out in order to verify the words and phrases/sentences of the Italian media which local Secondary School students comprehend better than others, and in order to consider the linguistic implications of such an outcome.