"Teaching/learning experience"

Teaching is my big passion .The whole procedure of discovering new ways to communicate knowledge to different level of students is fascinating. I would dare to say, the most productive and creative part of our profession. The main desire is my students to love the Italian culture, having as principle tool the Italian language. And this is possible, in my opinion, only through experiential learning. Although the majority of my students is adults, this is not a drawback for having a lesson full of joy and creative activities.

 Based on this theory, my lesson includes audiovisual means, such as videos, music, slides and video recording. A marvelous combination of the Italian culture and language is movies. That’s why they are my student’s and my favorite one. For example, during a lesson, I had removed the subtitles from a part of the movie “la vita è bella” and having divided the class into groups, I asked my students to produce their own version of the dialogue. It was very amusing for them and at the same time, they wanted to learn more information about the director, the actors and the background of the movie.

Another teaching method that we are very familiar with, is role-play activities. This kind of activity is very popular and useful to adults. I have noticed though, that in order that this activity would be effective and the students would participate willingly, teachers should organise the classroom as a theatre team.

To sum up, the material sources and the methods for language teaching are endless. What is necessary is the teacher’s love, eagerness and passion for his/her profession