The bilingual program implemented in Community School District 32 in Brooklyn, New York, had Spanish and Italian instructional components. The Spanish component served limited English speaking children in grades K-3. The Italian component served 328 Italian dominant children in grades K-9. English dominant students participated as peer models in…

Demonstrates ways the sentence combining technique can play a significant role in developing the writing skill, in making students more aware of their creative ability, and in heightening their sense of stylistic preferences. A range of combining exercises using Italian as the model language are provided. (Author/AMH)

Italian teachers of English can be categorized in three groups, according to their attitudes in regard to innovative teaching techniques: (1) those who reject anything new, (2) those who accept only the new, and (3) those who accept the new while preserving what is good in the old techniques. (CFM)

Considers implications for distance learning of negotiations by a group of intermediate learners of Italian interacting in dyads on a Web-based Italian native speaker (NS) chat program. Explores whether NS chat rooms are likely to offer an optimal environment for second language acquisition. (Author/VWL)

Argues that the use of thanks in closing conversations reflects not only situational parameters but also local concerns of conversational management. Analysis of naturally occurring data from English and Italian service encounters suggests that cross-cultural differences in closings may be in part the result of differences in the preferred…

Incompleteness of competence--lack of command of certain second-language (L2) aspects--and divergence--interlanguage representations of L2 properties different from native representations--are distinct states of grammatical competence, as seen in French and English speakers of Italian (L2). Discussion argues that competence differences reflect…

When analyzing the question of ehtnic identity, it is crucial to pay attention to oral history and biographical material: ethnicity is not so much a collective phenomenon as an individual one. For example, much has been written about Italian migration to the United States, but the lives of the ordinary immigrants and the rich detail of their…

The articles on culture in the Northeast Conference Report are intended especially for those teaching French, German, Italian, or Spanish. Generally they provide an update in the target language about current concerns including the family, education, economics, politics, and other matters of interest to second language learners. The following…

Reviews research about the brain's hemispheric functions, emphasizing the practical implications and applications of bimodal language learning. Four pedagogical principles (contextualization, visualization, diversification, and personalization) that characterize any integrated approach to language teaching are also discussed. (CB)

Two principles necessary for integrating the native language and second language approaches to language instruction are discussed: (1) that such an integration must be viewed as a meeting, not of subject areas but of professional competencies and (2) that languages must be considered not as separate systems but as a continuum. (MSE)

Examines recent studies of linguistic corpora in Italian, and presents the results of an analysis of "piace" and "piacciono" conducted on a corpus of 3.5 million words of written Italian, accessible at the University of Birmingham in England. Focuses on pedagogical applications of the data and on the inductive methodologies…

The insularity of Italian Americans is evident in their relationship with the Catholic church in America. By insisting on remaining Catholic, but only on their own terms, the Italians have won no support either from other Catholics, the church hierarchy, or the Protestants who hoped to convert them to Protestantism. (Author/MJL)

Describes a theatrical workshop developed to teach Italian to third-year students. The aim of the course was to increase students' understanding of Italian language and culture and to enhance their communicative skills and appreciation of literary texts. (Author/VWL)

Discusses the decline in the use of literature in foreign language instruction at the secondary level, despite the role literature plays in college level instruction. Describes a project in an Italian studies program that introduced units based on a number of canonical texts. (Author/VWL)

A generative semantic model for a componential analysis of prepositions in Italian sentences is described and critiqued. According to the model, a sentence is analyzed in terms of a "predicate" plus one or more "arguments." The model emphasizes the semantic role of prepositions and regards this role as the basis for a syntactic…