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The first part this article presents the history of CLAT of the University of Genova since its creation in 2012, showing how internationalization and innovation have always been the focuses of the three types of services it provides: language courses, services for the university itself and services for society’s language needs. In particular, the article illustrates the structure and methodology of CLIL courses for schoolteachers, the CLAT adaptive tests, and a specifically conceived learning environment and platform for online courses. It then proceeds to describe a few projects and experiences involving collaboration with social actors, such as the FAMI project, which aims at the promotion of heritage language for second and third generation schoolchildren of non-Italian origin (mainly South American Spanish speakers).

Unlike a few decades ago, using our phones, tablets, phablets or computers, all sorts of foreign language authentic materials are now easily available and accessible outside our language centres. Nevertheless, learners might find it difficult to select what is more effective for their learning process and be daunted by some complex features of naturally occurring language. This paper draws on previous studies and personal teaching experience to suggest that, in order to fully exploit these resources, language centres should aim at helping learners increase their ability in dealing with online authentic materials inside and outside the centre’s premises. In this perspective, they might consider the introduction of a relatively new approach based on corpora and online resources to enhance the learner’s autonomy and confidence when dealing with online authentic and unfiltered materials in a foreign language.

These three writers, in many ways emblematic of South Tyrolean literature, present, albeit with differences, a unifying element: an identity crisis, an uncertain collocation between two different linguistic cultural communities. This background is expressed in different ways in the three works, which also offer, as a second central theme, a process of intimate emancipation in their individual destinies of one, or rather more, female figures. The interweaving of individual destinies and politics of either the recent history of South Tyrol or that of the tumultuous past of wars makes the respective ‘stories’ emblematic of this difficult region. The many facets offered present various elements of analysis, but in their novelty these works are born from a tradition of continuous dialogue with its ‘contiguous’ literatures, primarily with the Central European and the Italian tradition, which is precisely the third characterizing element of border cultures.

The oeuvre of Bruno Mangiaterra focuses almost entirely on the problem of the signification of abstract objects. By privileging words, the artist manages to attribute new values to the work of art. Research on the visual texts of the artist brings out a certain interest on the part of the painter for linguistic culture, although he never worked out a real methodical approach to the art of writing. Since his production of paintings and installation art has been enhanced over time by verbal statements, his works have become visual texts.

This paper aims at investigating the role of Arabic Literature in Teaching Arabic as a Foreign Language, from the first manuals and grammars to the new tools, from the grammar-translation method to the digital storytelling approach. The situation of Arabic language teaching in Italy is compared to the methods used in the rest of Europe, notably in France where there is a long tradition in teaching Arabic. The debate also focuses on which literary texts, which literary periods (Classical or Contemporary Arabic Literature), which genres, and which authors are best suited to improving the linguistic skills of the learners. Finally, the paper deals with the question of diglossia and dialects in Arabic teaching as L2.