91942 - Workshop Activity: Teaching Italian and Textual Analysis (C.I.) (D)

Learning outcomes

Students will be able to make language education in a multilingual classroom more participatory and task-based. They will enhance their ability to promote both a student-centred approach and a variety of dynamic activities involving the entire multilingual classroom.

Course contents

Teaching orality in the multilingual class. Models and teaching techniques of inclusive language education.

The didactics of Italian L2 usually make a distinction between the educational objectives in the first reception phase and the educational priorities in the subsequent phases of integration and inclusion of students with a mother tongue other than Italian. From this point of view, the workshop will address some fundamental aspects of linguistic-communicative of Italian language acquisition as a language of schooling, and consider both the perspective of multilingual learners and that of the class group as a whole.Theoretical and applied aspects pertaining to the social, regulatory and cognitive processes recurring in Pre-School settings and Primary School will be considered, such as teaching interventions aimed at the acquisition of oral skills and/or their use in real communication situations; work on the different components of oral communication (linguistic, sociolinguistic, pragmatic and textual competence); teaching strategies for the presentation of activities on speech genres and language variety (variety approach). Attention will be paid to the pragmatic dimension of communication in the school context and to the strategic development of oral skills in cooperative peer work and in digital learning environments, in order to promote the learning of Italian, as the language used to develop academic skills.

Teaching orality in the multilingual class is a 16-hour workshop, consisting of 4 meetings, and is worth 2 credits.

Readings/Bibliography

Bibliographic references will be provided at the beginning of the workshop.

Teaching methods

The workshop addresses the analysis of language teaching actions and educational materials from two different perspectives:

• activities examined from the learner's perspective (before being asked to analyse the activities, participants will experience them directly)
  
• activities considered from the teacher's perspective (participants will describe significant activities, they will then adapt them for specific classes or re-create new ones starting from the examples provided).

In both cases, we will reflect on the basic theoretical criteria that inspire the emerging operational choices.

The use of one's own electronic devices (BYOD, Bring Your Own Device) is promoted: students are therefore invited to bring their own electronic devices.

Assessment methods

The following aspects will be considered for the purposes of the final evaluation:

• students’ participation and cooperation in the proposed activities;
  
• students’ reflective capacity (relevance of content; extent and depth of concepts and of conceptual links) demonstrated in a final report (max. 2/3 pages long) discussing the conceptual and operational links identified between the workshop and the National guidelines for the curriculum (Italian Ministry of Education, 2012);
  
• students’ ability to write in a clear and articulated manner.
  

The final evaluation will consist of four grades:

• +1 (very good)
  
• 0 (good)
  
• -1 (sufficient)
  
• Fail (workshop needs to be repeated again).

Teaching tools

Paper, iconic, audio and audiovisual texts (activity of Italian L2 etc.); multimedia presentations, online and offline digital resources.

Office hours

See the website of Paola Polselli