Piazza: Luogo di incontri authored by Donatella Melucci and Elissa Tognozzi. This introductory-level program addresses the needs of beginning learners of Italian with an enriching language learning experience through communicative and thoughtful practice, innovative instructional design, robust technology integration, and a wide range of cultural coverage. It employs an intuitive and functional approach to proficiency development, with research-driven strategies to include cultural awareness, literacy development, and difficult sentence structures

Foreign language teachers all face the same challenges. One of the largest challenges is trying to import the culture of their language into the classroom. In recent years, technology has been an important ally in this effort by providing easy access to realia. However, teachers need to choose their materials with care because sometimes they can appear “fake” or “prepackaged,” which can make students disengage.

One way to refresh Italian language curricula, particularly in the second year of college study, is to consider a content-based instruction. Opera may appear to be unsuited to the early years of college language study. The librettos, with the exception of a few phrases, are not a linguistic model for someone trying to communicate in modern Italian. However, opera can indeed be effective and enjoyable when approached thematically.

Italian language is immediately associated with a single nation: Italy. It is therefore very important for students of Italian to be exposed to texts and audiovisual materials that show the country, where the language they study is actually spoken, as it really is. Italy has changed a great deal in the last thirty years: it has become multicultural, and it has experienced the fall of the political party system that came into being after World War II.

Secondo le raccomandazioni dell'ACTFL, per rendere l,esperienza di apprendimento di una lingua straniera realmente efficace, deve a\,venire all'interno deia classe uno scambio comunicativo che sia quasi esclusivamente nella Iingua target.

Italian culture is often related to pizza, mandolino and La dolce vita. The Commedia all’Italiana has often been chosen as the most representative of the Italian life-style, thanks to the realism and subjectivism that characterizes the Commedia. Nowadays, Italian culture and language is changing and we, as Italian teachers, must be aware of its changes in order to show to our learners a significant picture.

The presentation will focus on integrating museum resources in the Italian language and culture curriculum at intermediate and advanced levels. Through a step-by-step construction of well developed, dynamic, self-paced activities, I will demonstrate how enriching, innovative, and adaptable online museum resources can be in teaching both language and content-based courses. Alternative platforms of content delivery, such as Wikis and Google+ will be discussed.

I plan to present an overview of a class that I have designed and that I am currently teaching at the University of Michigan. Italian 271 – Calcio, the Italian National Sport is an advanced language class taken by students who have completed four semesters of language learning. A passion for most Italian men and women, more than politics, religion, or any other sport, in Italy soccer is a source of endless conversations and a central element of popular culture. A not-given penalty or a victory in an important competition occupies the media for days and the memories of the tifosi forever.

This presentation will examine the use of four digital tools—Word Press, Audio-Lingua, Vimeo and VoiceThread—to increase students’ communicative skills and cultural awareness in Italian.  We will review the curricular requirements for the AP Italian Language and Culture Course and discuss how many of the core elements can be incorporated into pre-AP levels of Italian instruction.

In linguistics the term 'collocation' is used to mean a combination of lexical items that regularly or habitually occurs together, and sounds natural, in speech or writing. The way words combine in a language is not determined by rules of  syntax or grammar but is instead established through repeated context-dependent use within the language community.