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O artigo apresenta o projeto de ensino da produção escrita Osservare l’interlingua (Observar a interlíngua), que, desde 2007, envolveu dezenas de professores e centenas de alunos do ensino fundamental em Reggio Emilia (Itália) e região. Por meio de sessões de formação de professores e da atividade de pesquisa-ação conduzidas nas aulas, o projeto visa a promover uma educação linguística eficaz e inclusiva para todos os alunos e não somente para subgrupos específicos, como, por exemplo, estudantes monolíngues ou multilíngues, nativos ou não nativos, com habilidades de escrita mais ou menos desenvolvidas. O artigo ilustra os princípios teóricos e metodológicos que alicerçam as propostas didáticas do projeto, a partir da própria ideia de “interlíngua” que está no nome do projeto: para planejar e realizar percursos pedagógicos coerentescom as trajetórias evolutivas dos alunos, é necessário, antes de mais nada, partir da análise pontual das produções e das estratégias de escrita de cada um. Propõe-se uma avaliação de tipo formativo que valoriza a evolução do aprendizado, facilita a identificação das causas dos aspectos críticos e, consequentemente, permite o planejamento deintervenções didáticas pontuais. Além de apresentar a organização geral de Osservare l’interlingua e alguns de seus percursos pedagógicos, o artigo relata, de forma sintética, os principais resultados dos estudos experimentais que são periodicamente conduzidos sobre as produções orais e escritas das crianças, para verificar os efeitos das intervençõesdidáticas sobre as habilidades de escrita e sobre a motivação para escrever. Ambos os tipos de estudos confirmam a eficácia do projeto, que recebe também um retorno muito positivo por parte de todos os atores envolvidos (docentes, estudantes e famílias).

Just over ten years ago, Block (2007, p. 2) called the increasing attention that second language researchers – and social scientists at large – were giving to the construct of ‘identity’ an “obsession”. Since then, the identities of those who use, learn or study a language have been investigated in greater detail (e.g., Benson, Barkhuizen, Bodycott & Brown, 2013; Clarke, 2008; Dörnyei & Ushioda, 2009; Edwards, 2009). It may seem that intercultural language education is lagging behind this tendency. However, a number of publications (e.g., Kramsch, 2009; Rivers & Houghton, 2013) suggest that, considering contemporary global societies, the intercultural goals of language learning and teaching can be better promoted by replacing the notion of ‘culture’ with that of multiple ‘identities’ or ‘subjectivities’. More specifically, language education can aim to make students capable of selecting the language resources available to them in order to express their (developing) desired identities and, at the same time, to recognise the multiple identities that their interlocutors put forth in a given context (Borghetti, 2016). To make the case for this ‘identity-related intercultural language education’, the article reviews and discusses a number of studies which, from different perspectives, have already argued for a more prominent role of the construct of ‘identity’ in the field of second language education.

This article reports on English-Italian code-switching in a Facebook group of university students. The aim of the study is to describe the students’ interactional practices and their alternate use of English and Italian as lingua francas. 773 posts and comments written by 81 members of the group were analysed in a pragmatic and conversational perspective. The study shows that code-switching was ruled by precise norms of interaction and served to manage participant constellations. It also facilitated mutual understanding among students with different degree of language competence, and contributed to the creation of the plurilingual ‘small culture’ of the group.

This chapter reports on a small-scale study, which was carried out at a large HEI in Italy, within the frame of the European project ATIAH (Approaches and Tools for Internationalisation at Home, https://www.staff.ncl.ac.uk/atiah/). The aim was to investigate how the local university community (students, academic and non-academic staff, policy makers) conceptualised Internationalisation at Home (IaH) in terms of existing practices, desiderata and possible future scenarios. The chapter addresses the themes of the volume by focussing on those internationalisation policies and strategies, which, according to Beelen and Jones’s definition of IaH, aim at “the purposeful integration of international and intercultural dimensions into the formal and informal curriculum for all students within domestic learning environments” (2015: 69). Since contemporary European universities are international by their own nature, the challenge is investing on local diversities in order for the entire HEI population - not only mobile minorities – to be given opportunities for intercultural learning on campus (Teekens, 2007). However, intercultural development is not an automatic outcome of diverse people being together (Leask, 2004), just as much as it is not a result of living abroad (IEREST, 2015); precise and contextualised strategic interventions are needed. The study presented addresses IaH from the point of view of the university community. Data were collected through nine interviews and two focus groups (respectively with staff and students), and were analysed thematically. Results show that most interviewees, regardless of their role, perceived IaH as synonymous of promoting interculturality and multilingualism, as well as an opportunity for the university to renew curricula and teacher training in an intercultural perspective.

L’italiano L2 e l’internazionalizzazione delle università A cura di Fabiana Rosi e Sergio Lubello

Within the field of applied linguistics, a new trend in research can be envisaged which links study abroad and intercultural learning (Beaven & Borghetti, 2016): while in the ‘90s much research measured the students’ language gains as a result of their sojourn abroad (Coleman, 2015), after the so-called ‘social turn’ (Block, 2003), the field saw a substantial change in perspective; it shifted the focus towards students’ language socialisation abroad, with the aim of understanding what personal and social factors impact on the students’ language learning (Kinginger, 2009). This is the ground on which applied linguistics and the established domains of intercultural communication and cross-cultural psychology dedicated to SA meet; students’ language use abroad is situated in interpersonal relationships, which have the potential to influence the individual’s intercultural development as much as his or her second language acquisition. Thus, also in agreement with the so-called ‘cultural turn’ in language education (Byram, Holmes & Savvides, 2013), SA as a domain of enquiry within the field of applied linguistics is paying now much attention to intercultural issues concerning study abroad, clearly within a mainly language-oriented perspective (Beaven & Borghetti, 2016).

Per offrire assistenza agli studenti universitari nel corso dell’esperienza di mobilità, è importante capire il loro punto di vista riguardo il soggiorno all’estero. Questo articolo si concentra su un gruppo di studenti (N = 990) iscritti a corsi di studio vari, che si trovavano in fasi diverse della mobilità al momento dello studio (alcuni non erano partiti, altri si trovavano all’estero, altri ancora erano già tornati). La domanda aperta posta loro chiedeva di menzionare i tre fattori che più di altri determinano il successo dell’esperienza all’estero. Questa domanda faceva parte di un questionario somministrato in Europa dal progetto IEREST (http://ierest-project.eu). Una procedura di analisi dei dati mista e sequenziale ha portato all’identificazione di sei temi: lingua e comunicazione, contatti sociali, questioni pratiche, sviluppo personale, vantaggi accademici, e viaggi. Questo articolo presenta l’analisi dei primi tre temi, e mostra che, sebbene la competenza linguistica sia l’aspetto più frequentemente menzionato, gli studenti attribuiscono particolare importanza allo sviluppo personale (all’“apertura”) e ai contatti sociali (tra cui le amicizie). All’interno di IEREST, questi risultati sono serviti a sviluppare materiali di educazione interculturale per studenti Erasmus, ma offrono indicazioni utili a educatori e ricercatori anche in riferimento ad altri contesti di mobilità studentesca. In order to provide better support for students in higher education throughout a mobility experience, it is important to understand their point of view regarding stay abroad. This paper analyzes the responses of pre-departure, while-abroad, and upon-return students of different academic backgrounds (N = 990) to an open question that asked them to name the three most essential factors for making their stay abroad experience successful. This question was part of a wider online questionnaire distributed in Europe by the IEREST project (http://ierest-project. eu). A sequential mixed-method procedure identified six themes that were frequently cited: language and communication, social contacts, practicalities, personal development, academic advantages, and travel. This paper presents a more detailed analysis of the first three themes. It shows that although language proficiency was the single most frequently mentioned aspect, students attached particular importance to aspects of personal development (in particular with respect to openness) and social contacts (crucially including friendship). These findings informed the development of teaching materials within IEREST for supporting intercultural learning in the Erasmus context and may also be relevant to educators and researchers in various other study abroad contexts.

L’articolo presenta i risultati di uno studio condotto sulle narrazioni scritte di bambini di due classi quinte della scuola primaria coinvolte nel progetto Osservare l’Interlingua. Lo scopo della ricerca era valutare gli effetti di una sperimentazione educativa incentrata su attività di osservazione delle proprietà linguistico-discorsive di testi orali e scritti (letterari e prodotti dagli alunni stessi) sulle scelte dei bambini in merito all’uso del discorso riportato. I risultati ottenuti, messi a confronto con quelli di due classi di controllo, mostrano che chi ha parteci­pato alla sperimentazione scrive narrazioni più vivaci, anche perché fa maggiore uso del discorso diretto. Lo studio dimostra quindi l’efficacia di percorsi di educazione linguistica che attribuiscono agli alunni un ruolo attivo, “da piccoli ricercatori”, coinvolgendoli in attività collaborative di osservazione e manipolazione di testi propri e altrui., Italiano a scuola, Vol 1 (2019)

This paper focuses on intercultural language learning and on the methods to study it. The discussion is divided into two parts. In the first theoretical part, intercultural language learning is defined as a linguistic and discursive practice, according to a non-essentialist approach. In the second methodological part, the paper overviews the limited number of studies which, coherently with a language-use-based definition of intercultural learning, have employed forms of linguistic analysis to detect traces of such learning in class interaction. Finally the analysis of one extract from a class-based student-student interaction is presented, in order to showcase how different forms of linguistic analysis can be adopted to investigate the discursive and interactional features of intercultural learning., Studi e ricerche

Questo articolo dà conto dei risultati di un progetto di ricerca-azione in scuole primarie italiane. I principi centrali sono la valutazione della formazione, l’orientamento al processo della scrittura, l'apprendimento cooperativo e l’approccio inclusivo che non separa gli/le apprendenti in base alle loro capacità linguistiche o di scrittura. A questo studio hanno partecipato apprendenti di età compresa tra gli 8 e gli 11 anni, in sette classi sperimentali (N = 106) e in sette classi di controllo (N = 118). I loro testi sono stati esaminati sia olisticamente attraverso scale di efficacia comunicativa, sia mediante misurazioni analitiche. Il confronto tra alunni monolingui e multilingui, sia nelle classi sperimentali sia in quelle di controllo, mostra una serie di similarità in termini di competenza testuale e anche alcune differenze, in particolare per quanto riguarda gli aspetti più linguistici della scrittura, come la coesione verbale. Un risultato importante mostra che la partecipazione al programma ha avuto un impatto maggiore sulla qualità del testo degli/delle apprendenti rispetto alle loro condizioni iniziali di monolingui o multilingui. This article reports on the results of an action-research project in Italian primary schools. Its main principles are formative evaluation, a process orientation to writing, cooperative learning, and an inclusive approach that does not separate pupils according to their linguistic or writing skills. Pupils aged eight to eleven years old participated in the study in seven experimental (N = 106) and seven control classes (N = 118). Their texts were examined both holistically, through scales of communicative effectiveness, and by means of analytical measurements. The comparison of monolingual and multilingual pupils in both experimental and control classes shows a number of similarities in terms of textual competence, as well as a few differences, especially regarding the more linguistic aspects of writing, such as verb tense cohesion. A remarkable result is that students’ text quality seems to depend more on their participation to the program than on their monolingual or multilingual status. Este artículo informa los resultados de un proyecto de investigación-acción en escuelas primarias italianas. Sus principios más importantes son la evaluación formativa, una orientación al proceso de escritura, aprendizaje cooperativo y un enfoque inclusivo que no separa a los estudiantes según sus habilidades lingüísticas o de escritura. Los alumnos de entre ocho y once años participaron en el estudio en siete clases experimentales (N = 106) y siete clases control (N = 118). Sus textos se examinaron de manera holística por medio de escalas de efectividad comunicativa y mediciones analíticas. La comparación de alumnos monolingües y multilingües en las clases experimentales y de control muestra un número de similitudes en términos de competencia textual al igual que algunas diferencias, especialmente con respecto a los aspectos más lingüísticos de la escritura, como la cohesión del tiempo verbal. Un resultado notable muestra que participar en el programa tuvo un mayor impacto en la calidad del texto de los estudiantes que sus condiciones iniciales mono- o multilingüe.

Il presente articolo, di stampo pedagogico e operativo, descrive e commenta un’attività di educazione interculturale per studenti Erasmus sviluppata nel contesto del progetto europeo IEREST (http://ierest-project.eu/). L’attività “24 h Erasmus Life” mira a far riflettere gli studenti sul quattro aree tematiche: i possibili risvolti emotivi del percorso di mobilità, le differenze comunicative che caratterizzano ambienti accademici differenti, la dimensione sociale dell’esperienza all’estero, e i risvolti identitari dell’uso linguistico. Nell’autunno 2014, l’attività “24 h Erasmus Life” è stata sperimentata da alcuni insegnanti dell’Università di Bologna con due gruppi di studenti: il gruppo A, composto da 18 studenti internazionali, ha seguito l’attività in aula tramite lezioni faccia-a-faccia. Il gruppo B era formato da 23 studenti dell’Università di Bologna che, al momento dello svolgimento dell’attività, si trovavano in Erasmus; per questa ragione il gruppo B ha partecipato all’attività in modalità a distanza, tramite un Learning Management System. Il presente articolo ripercorre le fasi in cui si articola l’attività , si sofferma sulle esperienze degli studenti, e commenta alcuni estratti tratti dalle trascrizioni delle lezioni (gruppo A) e alcuni esempi tratti dai blog e dai forum dell’attività online (gruppo B). In generale, l’articolo intende mostrare come si è svolto l’insegnamento nei due casi considerati. This pedagogical paper describes and discusses a teaching activity of intercultural education for mobile students developed within the European IEREST project (http://ierest-project.eu/). The activity is titled “24h Erasmus Life” and aims at making students reflect on four interrelated areas of their sojourn: the emotional impact of living abroad, the understanding of how communication works within a different academic community, the broader social dimension of the experiences, and the identity-related language issues. In Autumn 2014, the activity was tested with two different groups of students by teachers at the University of Bologna (UNIBO): the first group (A) was formed by 18 international incoming students and was taught by face-to-face teaching in Bologna; the second group (B) comprised 23 UNIBO students who were doing their study abroad in a variety of European countries, and participated in the activity by means of a Learning Management System. This paper traces the main instructional phases of “24h Erasmus Life”, and comments on the students’ learning experiences by reporting extracts from transcribed peer-to-peer class interactions (group A) and from class blog and forums (group B). Overall, the paper aims to describe how the teaching took place in the two cases considered.

In agricultural calcareous soils, hydroxyapatite (APA) may well represent an important support for urease immobilisation and could be present in both mineral and organo-mineral complexes. In this paper we studied the formation of APA-urease-humic acid (HA) complexes after the addition of urease either before or after HAs. We then proceeded to evaluate the role of HAs on the activity and stability of the complexes as compared to the APA-urease complexes and free urease. When increasing amounts of HAs were added after urease, they did not affect the activity of the enzymes that had already adsorbed onto the complexes. On the contrary, adding the same amount of HA before the enzyme caused a significant reduction in the amount of enzyme adsorbed. However, when urease adsorption onto the APA-HA complexes was carried out in the presence of NaCl, the enzyme activity of the complexes increased sharply to 86% of the initial activity. The immobilisation of the enzyme on the support increased urease stability against pronase treatment as well as directly in soil over time. The inhibition of urease activity by Cu2+ was reduced by urease immobilisation. However, the presence of HA did not alter the stabilisation capability of APA when alone.

PAISA' is a Creative Commons licensed, large web corpus of contemporary Italian. We describe the design, harvesting, and processing steps involved in its creation.

The article offers some reflections on the so-called ‘intercultural perspective to the teaching of modern languages’ or ‘intercultural linguistic education’. It focuses in particular on a relatively recent development of the discipline, linked to the attempt to adopt a non-essentialist definition of ‘culture’ in glottodidactics. Unlike the well-known culturalist paradigm, the non-essentialist one challenges the idea that it is appropriate to set up the development of intercultural competence by leveraging only the international dimension of diversity. Non-essentialist principles are currently on the margins of intercultural linguistic education; but they are an opportunity to question some of the assumptions on which much of the theoretical reflection and didactic practice dedicated to the intercultural aims of learning and teaching languages are based., Studi di glottodidattica, V. 7, N. 2 (2022): Special Issue

La comunicazione commenta uno dei risultati ottenuti nel corso di uno studio di caso condotto presso l’Università di Bologna, nell’ambito del progetto europeo ATIAH (Approaches and Tools for Internationalisation at Home). L’obiettivo complessivo era indagare come la comunità universitaria locale (studenti, personale accademico e non accademico, responsabili delle politiche educative) concettualizzasse “l’internazionalizzazione a casa” in termini di pratiche esistenti e di prospettive future. L’analisi dei dati – raccolti tramite 9 interviste e 2 focus group – evidenzia che l’internazionalizzazione è percepita dagli intervistati come sinonimo di multilinguismo e di valorizzazione della lingua italiana. Commenteremo questo risultato alla luce del dibattito scientifico sull’internazionalizzazione delle università. Internationalisation in italian? The point of view of the academic community on multilingualism at the University of Bologna This paper comments on one of the results of a case study conducted at the University of Bologna as part of the European project ATIAH (Approaches and Tools for Internationalization at Home). The overall objective was to investigate how the local university community (students, academic and non-academic staff, educational policy makers) conceptualized “internationalization at home” in terms of existing practices and future perspectives. The analysis of the data – collected through 9 interviews and 2 focus groups – shows that internationalization is perceived by the interviewees as synonymous with multilingualism and the enhancement of the Italian language. We discuss this result in light of the scientific debate on the internationalization of universities., Italiano LinguaDue, V. 12 N. 1 (2020)