Teaching English in Italy: A Tale of Two Systems.

Abstract

English is today’s global language, mother tongue to almost 400 million people in the world and studied and used as a second language by roughly 2 billion. But numbers alone do not account for its importance and preference as the world’s lingua franca. What makes its studying profitable is certainly its value for time/money spent: being a language structurally poor and highly scalable, it requires little effort on the part of an inexperienced learner to grasp its basic grammar and vocabulary, while compensating more motivated learners with increasing possibilities of expression in specialized areas. Concerning grammar and syntax, English is among the simplest languages in the world, and though the idea of simplicity is subjective and debatable, when contrasted to Italian grammatical and syntactical variations one cannot but recognize its straightforwardness. Why is it, then, that the performances in English of Italian students are so bad, whatever the survey? And how can they be improved? In this work, we are going to investigate the linguistic reasons – and the tentative learning solutions – to such poor understanding. We think that one of the main reasons for Italians not performing well in English – or, for that matter, in all languages – might be correlated both to the texts they use and to their not knowing formally the Italian language they otherwise use very proficiently. A review of textbooks, grammatical theories and syntax findings will be taken into account to show that English, in the end, is never presented to students, especially the youngest ones, in contrast to the Italian syntax or marketed as a simpler language than Italian. Rather, and especially because textbooks and grammars do not take into account learners’ first languages, it looks like just a subject that “must” be learnt because compulsory in the syllabus, thus depressing the motivation factor in students. We propose some contrastive grammar points that might be introduced in English classes to Italian-speaking students, together with a motivation-building path in order to remarket English as a “simple”, as well as a playful, language to learn, detaching somewhat from the idea of “duty” or “usefulness” which is today dominant.