Paolo Balboni

Language Awareness in the National Curriculum for Language Education in Italy.

Abstract The Italian school system is highly centralised: curricula are prepared by the Ministry of Education and then enforced as Acts of Parliament. All schools are supposed to implement the state curriculum. Analysis of the curriculum for language education from primary school level to pre‐university courses shows the place given to the development of language awareness and of conscious knowledge of language in Italian schools. Some points offer a relevant contribution to the definition of the role of schools in stimulating language awareness.

Ladino-Italian Bilingual Programs in Italy

The Ladin community lives in five hidden valleys in the Dolomites. The language spoken here is a variety of the rhaetoromance group of languages, which also includes Romantsch in the Swiss Canton des Grisons and Friulian, the “dialect” of the most north-eastern region in Italy, bordering with Slovenia (Belardi, 1991). Romantsch is the fourth official language in Switzerland and several affirmative actions have been undertaken to protect it since World War II (Carigiet, 1996). Friulian, by contrast, is disappearing and is gradually giving way to Italian, which is the official language in schools, offices, courts, and so on (Meghnaghi, 1982).

Etica nell'approccio, nel metodo, nelle azioni dell'educazione linguistica

IT Il saggio si interroga sulla possibilita di definire cio che e bene, e quindi eticamente sostenibile, nell’educazione linguistica. Ovvero, vaglia su quali dimensioni e con quali modalita si debba procedere per una valutazione etica dell’approccio, il metodo e la pratica dell’insegnamento/apprendimento delle lingue. Tale valutazione passera attraverso la disamina di quel settore di studi che in Italia prende il nome, con sfumature e riferimenti spesso profondamente diversi, di educazione linguistica. Identificare una chiara definizione di questo ambito interdisciplinare di ricerca e del concetto stesso di educazione linguistica, dei suoi elementi cardine e dei suoi specifici oggetti di studio sembra essere un’operazione necessaria e un presupposto indispensabile per una riflessione etica sulle azioni dell’educazione linguistica anche in termini di sostenibilita del sistema glottodidattica. Parole-chiave: EDUCAZIONE LINGUISTICA, GLOTTODIDATTICA, ETICA DELL’INSEGNAMENTO, COMPETENZA COMUNICATIVA. EN This paper explores the possibility of defining what is good and thus ethically sustainable in language instruction. That is, it analyzes to what extent and how one would engage in an ethical evaluation of approaches, methods, and practices of teaching and learning languages. This evaluation is carried out via the field of study known in Italy--albeit with nuances and meanings that are at times very different--as educazione linguistica, roughly “language instruction.” To undertake an ethical reflection on the actions of language instruction and the sustainability of systems of language teaching methodology, it is first necessary to clearly define language instruction as an interdisciplinary research area and concept, and to identify its key elements and their specific objects of study.