In this contribution I present an overview of Italian in Malta, the third language of Malta, focusing on the role of this language within educational institutions and other domains of society. Italian was one of Malta's official languages till 1936 and, historically, it was used mainly within administrative and cultural spheres of society. Contact…

The focus of this research is on the nature of lexical cross-linguistic influence (CLI) between non-native languages. Using oral interviews with 157 L1 Italian high-school students studying English and German as non-native languages, the project investigated which kinds of lexis appear to be more susceptible to transfer from German to English and…

The unit-decade compatibility effect is interpreted to reflect processes of place value integration in two-digit number magnitude comparisons. The current study aimed at elucidating the influence of language properties on the compatibility effect of Arabic two-digit numbers in Austrian, Italian, and Czech first graders. The number word systems of…

The validity of the Italian version of the 28-items Resilience Scale for Adolescents (READ) was examined. A sample of 472 senior high school students between 18 and 20 years of age were used for this purpose. Reliability and validity were investigated by means of Cronbach's alpha, exploratory factor analysis, and confirmatory factor analysis. The…

Background: Understanding lexical abilities in infants and toddlers is important, yet no single tool can be used. Aims: To perform a validation of a new tool (known as the Picture Naming Game, or "PiNG") for assessing lexical comprehension and production in toddlers and to obtain developmental trends for Italian children. Methods &…

The Aspect Hypothesis assumes that--in early interlanguages--the perfective past spreads from telic to atelic verbs because events occurring in the past are easier to be associated with predicates having an inherent endpoint in their lexico-conceptual representation. In this study it is questioned whether for initial L2ers knowing the general…

Background: Research findings on vocabulary development in children with Down syndrome are inconsistent. This study aimed to analyse the developmental trend of vocabulary growth in children with Down syndrome and the relationships between vocabulary and chronological and developmental age. Method: Children's vocabulary size was assessed by a…

This paper reports on the outcomes of a three-year study investigating the use of digital technologies to increase the authenticity of high-stakes summative assessment in four Western Australian senior secondary courses. The study involved 82 teachers and 1015 students and a range of digital forms of assessment using computer-based exams, digital…

In 2008, the Faculty of Arts at The University of Melbourne embarked upon a major overhaul of curriculum in nine languages: Arabic, Chinese, Indonesian and Japanese in the Asia Institute; and French, German, Italian, Russian and Spanish in the School of Languages and Linguistics. This article details the changes to the beginners' Italian…

This paper describes the author's experience with a pilot course of Italian in SL[R]. The course is part of a PhD research on "Exploring the potential of virtual worlds to promote Intercultural Awareness in students learning Italian as a Foreign Language." In the paper the author will justify her choice of virtual worlds for the…

This study investigated the role of typological relatedness, language of the community, and age, in predicting similarities and differences between English-Italian, Spanish-Italian bilingual children and their monolingual child and adult counterparts in the acceptability of pre- and postverbal object pronouns in [[plus or minus]focus] contexts in…

An informal organisation that is becoming quite influential in the spread of Italian in Italy, as well as abroad, is the "Accademia della Crusca" which began its activities during the Renaissance, under quite different auspices. Founded in Florence in 1582-1583, this Academy was inspired by the theories of Pietro Bembo (1470-1547), a…

The use of digital tools like computers and tablets in institutional learning arenas give rise to forms of flexibility where time and space boundaries become diffuse. Online learning sites are understood as being crucial today, especially in large parts of the Global North, where anyone anywhere potentially can become a student and have access to…

This book offers a collection of original papers showing how Higher education institutions have coped with changing the language of instruction. It points out that Higher education institutions have undergone radical change in the past decades; of which the shift to English-medium instruction, as well as bi- or plurilingual programmes, is one…

This article analyses intercultural education outcomes produced in the setting of teaching Italian as a second language (ISL) in an Italian school. Intercultural education is produced in interactions which are based on specific cultural presuppositions, i.e. expectations regarding learning, role hierarchy and evaluation of student performances.…