Awareness of the role of the body in the pedagogy of Italian in Canada and in Italy

ABSTRACT

This study addresses the role of the body in the pedagogy of Italian as a second language. Given that the understanding of meanings and functions of body movements in combination with speech can enrich language pedagogy, we organized a study to investigate whether context of learning determines more or less awareness of the body in Italian language pedagogy. We invited 224 students of Italian, in three levels of proficiency, and their 16 instructors, at a Canadian and an Italian educational setting to answer a series of questions. Our survey asked participants to interpret body language as a pedagogical tool and as a linguistic and cultural component as well. The results suggest that, in terms of awareness of the body, the pedagogy of Italian in Canada is similar to the pedagogy of Italian in Italy, where both contexts would benefit from a systematic integration of the body to aid in the teaching and learning of the target language.

KEYWORDS:

• Body language awareness
• Italian pedagogy
• Canada
• Italy

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank the students and the instructors who welcomed the opportunity to participate in this study. I am grateful to Prof. Dan Edelstein at the University of Windsor and to Dr. Olesya Falenchuk at the University of Toronto for their assistance with the statistical analysis included in this article. I would also like to thank Ms. Jacqueline Lee for her help with coding the data of this study.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.