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.

A module based on the bitter-sweet Italian film “Terraferma” (2011, director: Giuseppe Crialese) was created by the writer, being an Italian language assistant, and used in a Year 11 Italian class in a secondary school of Melbourne. The module occupied around 10 hours of lessons, despite it was planned to be developed in 20 hours. That was due to the strong criticism shown by the students and the Italian teachers.

An assessing questionnaire submitted to the 12 students of the class showed criticism towards the choice of the movie, as, it mainly was not representative of Italian culture. On the other hand, the 3 Italian teachers criticized the communicative approach that characterized the module, as not adapted to Australian secondary students.

The module will be presented as well as the results of the questionnaires, in the hope to stimulate a fruitful discussion about Italian culture and to go beyond its stereotypes. Nowadays, the evolving existing context involves new actors, who are defining new spaces of culture and language: migrants. They need to be represented as their presence is determining the new Italy.

Maria Grazia Imperiale – University of Glasgow - m.imperiale.1@research.gla.ac.uk

Presented at the Teaching Italian Culture Conference Georgetown University, Washington D.C. Saturday, October 19, 2013