L'italiano L2 per l'integrazione in un contesto interculturale. La formazione glottodidattica per il progetto SPRINT (SonderPRojektINTegration)

Between October 2008 and November 2009 the Servizio Linguistico d’Ateneo (SeLd’A) of Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore took part in an international project developed by the university together with Ial Cils and the University of Stuttgart. SeLd’A was responsible for a training programme for teachers of Italian L2 working in kindergartens of three Länder in Germany, a plurilingual and intercultural context with a high number of children of Italian origin. This paper aims at giving an account of the activities proposed and implemented during the training in the light of its underpinning theoretical and methodological framework: on the one hand the need to focus on children’s L1 as a way to foster linguistic and cultural integration and subsequently to improve L2; on the other the relevance of the affective and emotional dimension in teaching languages to young learners, as well as of content-based second language instruction as a mean to fully involve children in learning. As we will say, this framework not only contributed to the enhancement of participants’ motivation but also gave them a deeper awareness of bilingualism and bilingual education as a key resource in an intercultural perspective.