The guidelines that inspire the organization and management of ESI's Italian Language and Culture courses.

1. THE TRAINING OFFER

          The training offer is developed on the three levels of education, of teaching, and the organization, and is aimed at students, to teachers, to families and all personnel involved in the training process. The teachers have adequate language skills and a consolidated experience in the methodological and didactic field.

1.1  Educational principles and pedagogical choices

        Our reference values ​​are: the partecipation, cooperation, the responsability; they are vehicles and modes of action not only for basic education, but also of the construction of knowledge and values ​​that “they can be common to all citizens, regardless of religion, by ethnicity, by the welfare state, from sex…”.

Indeed, only the comparison between the various memberships can facilitate the development of critical skills and the growth of the person as a whole.

In particular, the quality of the training offer is inspired by the following principles:

• transparency, determined by the clarity of the objectives, the clarity in the presentation and description of the results that can be obtained;
• reliability, highlighted by an internal consistency, a methodological clarity, a linguistic purity, a reliability and opportunity in the choice of texts that must be functional to the chosen objectives;
• flexibility, highlighted by the ability to offer variety in operational proposals and sensitivity towards the subjects and the environment with which one interacts, without ever forgetting the operational goals that we had set ourselves;
• participation, determined by a disposition to co-manage situations, showing interest and involvement in interpersonal relationships, awareness of the social and of the role that is exercised within the group - courses;
• generativity, understood as the ability to initiate problematic learning that generates motivation, curiosity and therefore a further desire to learn.

1.2   Strategy operational

            Our users are heterogeneous and in the same groups defined as “elementary, middle and adult ”there are students with different language skills. This makes it necessary to organize by subgroups to reduce heterogeneity through the use of operational strategies “a spirale” and cyclical, and the preparation of material selected and / or created by the teacher himself.

Furthermore, all the measurement tools developed by the teachers on the basis of their previous experience are used, such as the entrance tests to ascertain the language skills of adults and children.

1.3. Elementary level

General objectives:

Educational – behavioral

• feel good in the class or motivate the awareness of being able to communicate in Italian
• knowing how to express their needs and experiences at the right time,
• acquire safety and autonomy in work,
• understand and help weaker comrades,
• respect others and their cultural differences,
• respect your own things and those of others,
• respect the rules of the games.

Didactic

a) Cognitive

• expansion of the experience,
• knowledge and classification of reality
• enrichment of knowledge already acquired,
• organization of the elements already known,
• observation, I listen, production, reading, writing.

b) Linguistic

• the acquisition of language skills: I listen, oral and written comprehension, oral and written production.

Specific goals

First level

• Knowing how to listen: grasp the essence of a short message, either proposed by the teacher or by peers or by an audiovisual medium,
• Store easy messages,
• Understand and use forms of courtesy (to greet, to show up, etc.),
• Knowing how to answer and question (ask and say your name and age, ask and give the address, affirm and deny, identify objects and colors, identify the parts of the body, express possession, number up to 20).

Second level

• Give and ask for simple information,
• Identify objects and know how to associate them with properties, quantity, kind, number and color, give count 20 on,
• Knowing how to detect spatial data,
• Identify the days, The months and the seasons,
• Describe the weather,
• Express preferences (I like / dislike / prefer),
• Knowing how to answer a simple and precise question,
• Reuse some of the linguistic structures presented in other contexts,
• Knowing how to recognize a simple written message,
• Knowing how to rewrite short sentences using reference models.

Third level

• Knowing how to identify professions,
• Describe an action at the time it takes place,
• Express moods and feelings,
• Express obligations and prohibitions,
• Write short, simple texts,
• Knowing how to read and use numbers with hundreds and thousands,
• Knowing how to check the spelling of known words,
• Read a story and know how to identify the main elements,
• Identify the use of times (past, present and future).

Methodology

            An eclectic approach will be used that favors the acquisition of communication skills through the fundamental moments of listening, of speaking, of reading and writing.

        Priority will be given to increasing the pupil's audio-oral language skills, while reading and writing will be presented in later stages.

            Learning must be as spontaneous as possible trying to avoid abstract and formalistic grammatical explanations and without excluding, where possible, the use of the English or local language, to avoid initial crises of disorientation and rejection.

• Material
• Audio-oral material: nursery rhymes, poems, riddles, songs.
• Visual material: video, drawings, illustrations,  research books, educational games.
• Rating

The formative assessment of learning is carried out through survey tests and indicators consistent with the proposed objectives.

During and at the end of the teaching units there will be checks to be carried out with specific tests, aimed at evaluation, measurement, control and reinforcement of the production of language and communication skills of pupils.

1.4. Medium level

Educational goals

            The identity of the children must be strengthened so that they can live between two linguistic-cultural reference systems, you become a factor of personality development.

            The presentation of historical themes, literary, geographical referring to Italy will be included in a path that leads to awareness of one's own identity and will lead to the broader vision of European integration.

Didactic objectives

            The teaching of the Italian language and culture, aims to develop the appropriate use of language as a tool for communicating in a complex socio-cultural situation.

• General linguistic objectives
• Develop listening skills: listen and understand.
• Methodology

            The communicative approach will be a fundamental and decisive criterion for the purpose of involving the class and its motivation, taking into account the real interests of the pupils. Didactic strategies will be applied that will enhance situations in a communicative context, such as the use of authentic material.

Contents

          The programming of the contents is intended as flexible and is adapted to the reality of the groups, notoriously heterogeneous.

1.5. Adult level

General objectives

• Create pleasure and interest in learning the Italian language within a stimulating context, creative and collaborative,
• Develop linguistic and communication skills in the Italian language,
• Strengthen students' confidence in their communication skills, expression and knowledge,
• Introduce students to the knowledge of the Italian reality from the historical point of view, cultural, geographical, politico, etc…

The critical analysis of the user needs of adult courses and the peculiarities that characterize it (frequency not always constant due to work commitments, suspension of attendance for even prolonged periods, very limited commitment to self-study, etc.) leads to the need, while maintaining the anchorage to the Common European Framework of Reference, to differentiate the levels indicated by the Framework itself into further sub-levels.

This internal differentiation and articulation represents the basis for the development of a modular programming, where by module we mean a defined segment, meaningful and self-sufficient of the teaching-learning path.

–	LEVEL	FRAMEWORK REF. ME
Modulo 1	Beginners 1	A1 (contact)
Modulo 2	Beginners 2	“
Modulo 3	Elementary 1	“
Modulo 4	Elementary 2	A2
Modulo 5	Pre intermediate	“
Modulo 6	Intermediate 1	B1 (threshold)
Modulo 7	Intermediate 2	“
Modulo 8	Advanced 1	B2 (progress)
Modulo 9	Advanced 2	B2/C1 (effectiveness)