FACTS ABOUT ITALIAN #1

FACTS ABOUT THE ITALIAN LANGUAGE

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This set of 36 facts cards focuses on the Italian language, and is a great whole-group learning activity at any time of the school year. They’re particularly useful as ice-breakers in the back-to-school phase, as it’s a very social activity, and really gets students up from their desks, walking around talking to each other.

The information addresses a broad scope of facts about***Italian***, from its history, various fields within linguistics to literature and politics, showing the role these have played over centuries in the development of what we know today as Modern or Standard Italian, and its status within the development of world languages generally.

The cards are designed for more advanced students, as the facts do require a certain level of world knowledge and language awareness, and particularly world geography. I always screen a world map first, situating Italy globally, and within Europe. I point out its regions, cities, islands and so on, because using the cards is also a great way of actually learning more about the world, more specifically Italy, its history, shifting geographical and political borders, migrating populations and so on. There are some essentially basic facts about the***Italian language*** too, such as information about its alphabet, and these kinds of facts help to consolidate students’ existing knowledge, alongside learning more complex or in-depth facts.

I use the cards in various ways: for example, a really popular method is the walk and talk activity, where students take a card each, walk around the classroom, exchanging facts - when they’ve shared the information on their card, students swap cards, and carry on walking — in this way, they encounter the same facts a couple of times, which really embeds knowledge. I tend to do this activity several times across the school year, following it up with an informal whole-group quiz, particularly when I feel that students need a break from more formal learning.

I also use the cards as either entrance or exit cards - again, followed by a quick quiz at several points in the year - simply turn the language on the individual cards into a question format. This works really well when students quiz each other, which moves them away from teacher-led learning towards more independent and social learning.

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GRAZIE MILLE E BUON APPRENDIMENTO!