Italian for Spanish Speakers at MiraCosta College

I have a couple of interesting projects this semester that I think are worth sharing. One is in the Italian 101 and 102 online courses, and one in the Italian 202 f2f course. I will cover this last one in another post.

It is more than one year that I have been following the development of the courses of Italian for Spanish Speakers at Cal State University Long Beach under the direction of Prof. Clorinda Donato, and I really think this could be a great solution for many Community Colleges in California that serve a big hispanic population. MiraCosta College just recently received the status of Hispanic Serving Institution and this is another reason why I would be interested in applying this method. And what I believe is very appealing, especially for this kind of institution, is the motivational aspect and the validation factor that would present for the hispanic population.

In few words, instructors would teach Italian to Spanish speaking students differently than to the English speaking students. Using the similarities of the two languages, with the intercomprehension method Spanish speaking students would develop mastery of the language much faster (some researches suggest even two times faster), with a high level of satisfaction and, if the curriculum allows, saving time in their academic career.

Pedagogically this approach strongly questions some basics of the natural approach, especially the concept that language learner should start as a ¨tabula rasa¨ with no experience at all. Contrary to the natural and the communicative approach, this method does not ostracizes the use of the students first (or second) language. The focal point of this method is actually the exact opposite: the maximum usage of the students previous knowledge.

In order to open a section of Italian dedicated to Spanish speakers, the process would be quite long, and even with the course ready, scheduling issues can arise. Do we have enough students? What time of the day would be the most appropriate?

So, I opted for two different plans of action. First, I started to survey all Italian students enrolled in Italian courses at MiraCosta in order to try to accomplish two goals: to see if the number of Spanish speakers is high enough, and to try to understand if there is a preferred time for them.

At the same time I decided to start trying in on the field, creating a ¨partition¨ in my online classes. I surveyed the students in the online classes and I created two groups, one populated by the English speakers and one by the Spanish speakers. Then, I created new instructional material in Spanish. Now the students are able to choose if they want to receive their instruction in Spanish or English. Of course, grouping the students and teaching them in two different languages is a solution that can be applied only in an online setting, where you can choose the individual piece of information that each student receives. But I think it is a good way for piloting this approach.

So, keep in touch. In future posts I will blog about the results and the implementation of this method.