Piazza Sant'Antonino 1
Palermo
Italy
- Youth and education
The School of Italian as a Foreign Language is an institution belonging to the Department of Philology and Linguistics of the University of Palermo.
The Department, since 1998, and the School, since 2006, promote language learning, teacher training and research in the field of Second Language Acquisition and Italian as a Second/ Foreign Language.
The School welcomes every year students and researchers from all over the world learning Italian within the special and standard courses and participating to the several research seminars hosted by the School.
The School is also very focused on social and linguistic inclusion, welcoming immigrants and offering them free language courses thanks to different founding schemes.
The School is an examination centre for CILS exams, the official certification of Italian as a Second/Foreign Language released by the University of Siena.
EDUCATION AND TEACHER TRAINING:
Since 2005, the School offers training and education programmes both to undergraduate students who, within their university studies, work as trainees in local schools with a high number of foreign children and to Italian teachers working in the same schools.
Since 2009 the School, together with the Department, offers postgraduates courses in Italian Language Acquisition every academic year. The structure of the postgraduate courses includes frontal lectures combined with online units, using e-learning and Moodle.
From the theoretical point of view, the students enrolled into the postgraduate courses benefit from lectures on pragmatics, second language acquisition theories, sociolinguistics and linguistics, lesson and curricula planning, assessment and so forth. From the practical perspective, postgraduate students start their teaching career within the language courses of the School where they are guided and supervised by expert lecturers and where closely work with already qualified teachers.
Since 2010, the School organises and hosts international seminars for teachers of Italian working abroad. The seminars focus on specific teaching techniques developed by the teachers of the School and on theoretical aspects of contemporary Italian.
The School is also very focused on the continuous training of its own teachers and it periodically offers them seminars and activities on the most up-to-date methodologies in language teaching. The School has recently started a theoretical and practical education path on the links between theatre and language teaching with the aim of critically understanding which strategies and instruments from the theatre can be applied to language teaching. Every year the School offers education and training programmes to approximately 600 teachers, trainees and postgraduate students.
LANGUAGE COURSES:
Every academic year the School offers Italian Language Courses for every level of the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages. All the courses are held with the most up-to-date methodology, based on the communicative approach. There are different typologies of courses:
- Semi-intensive standard courses of Italian Language and Culture for exchange students (Erasmus, Erasmus Mundus, Leonardo Da Vinci) and visiting scholars of the University.
- Winter and Summer intensive courses that combine traditional language courses with a full immersion in Palermo everyday life and the offer of additional workshops focusing on cultural related topics, such as theatre, cooking, cinema, music, creative writing, Sicilian art and culture. Students coming from abroad enjoy trips and guided tours to discover the history, the art and the traditions of Palermo and its surroundings.
- Special courses of Italian and history of art that have a theoretical structure combined with an extensive application consisting of several educational trips to discover the masterpieces of Palermo and Sicily. Such courses aim at introducing the students to Italian art and to the specialised language, texts and lectures of History of Art.
- Advanced courses of Italian language and culture that combine classes of Italian Literature, History of Art and Italian Linguistics, all taught by university lecturers and researchers.
ACTIVE PROJECTS:
- Learning for Living: The School of Italian, together with the Department of Philology and Linguistics, and in partnership with the Southern Regional College (Northern Ireland), the Helsinki Deaconess Institute (Finland) and the Cumbernauld College (Scotland) benefits for the years 2011-2013 from the funds of the LLP Programme-Grundtvig, developing the project “Learning for Living”. The project aims at exchanging best practices and know-how in the thematic area of linguistic and cultural education of adult migrants. Students and teachers of the four partners are regularly meeting and organising seminars in order to share and enrich the approaches and the methodologies in language learning/teaching used within the territory of each partner, with special attention to the context migrant communities.
- Italian for Foreign Citizens living in Italy: Since 2011, thanks to Regional funds, the School offers free courses of Italian language and culture to adult foreign citizens legally living in Italy. The students enrolled into the courses have access to the CILS exams, the official certification of Italian as a Second/Foreign Language (foreign citizens living in Italy are now required to certify an A2 level of the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages to submit the application for the EU long-term residence permit). The courses focus on Italian culture and language and on important aspects of Italian community and public life.