Innovation in Language Learning

As a lecturer of the Italian language with 10 years of hands-on experience in the Dept.  of Italian language in the highest-ranking educational establishment for teaching languages in Egypt, namely: Faculty of Languages, Ain Shams University, I've come to the conclusion that teaching Italian language to either true beginners or advanced students through the grammar-translation method was able to graduate thousands of students that were perfectly able to read and write the Italian language, but they unfortunately had poor oral and listening skills.  Obviously, that was the result of following the classic method which, other than implying that the instructor conducts the class in the student’s native language, it also gives major attention only to reading and writing through structural grammar.  As a result, speaking and listening are usually overlooked, which affects the language proficiency of the student.

In 2011, I happened to have a class of 12 Egyptian true beginners who came to Berlitz Language Center to learn Italian language. They all worked for a very well-known Italian company situated in Egypt, and needed to learn Italian -quickly and efficiently- to be able to deal with Italian colleagues either in local meetings in Egypt or if sent for missions in other branches of the company worldwide.

Adopting the direct method, also known as Berlitz method, I only and directly used the target language (Italian) in class rather than translating the teaching material.  The curriculum was always divided into vocabulary, grammar and conversation.  After introducing basic vocabulary, I always taught everyday words and sentences through already known words, demonstration, pictures, miming and realia (authentic objects) too.  Grammar was taught inductively, as the students were asked to figure the rules out rather than receive them as explicit grammatical rules.  Moreover, elementary conversations were entirely made through contextual/topical teaching, with conversation exercises based on images of fashion advertising, art, journalism, film and music.  Later on, as the students’ level began to flourish, and with the help of Youtube, I introduced multimedia grammar lessons, including coordinated music, film and short content-based readings on different topics in Italian cultural history.  Self and peer correction were equally used for high motivation. 

Results were: all of the 12 students were promoted to the next levels (intermediate) with medium/high proficiency level.  Only eight were promoted to the advanced levels and four students were relocated in the company’s branch in Italy and are now able to interact fluently with native speakers.  The paper is divided into 2 parts and a conclusion.  The first part is dedicated to the theoretical framework and the second part tackles the methodology and techniques applied in class.  The conclusion has the results of the paper accompanied by the advantages and disadvantages of the followed methodology.