"Teaching Italian as an L2/FL through Contemporary Italian Literature by Women Writers of Migrant Origin. A Conversation with Sumaya Abdel Qader About Quello che abbiamo in testa"

Literary works by Italian women writers of migrant origin have been analysed in several literary and comparative studies, but still scarcely investigated from a teaching perspective. This article explores their linguistic and intercultural potentialities, taking Sumaya Abdel Qader’s Quello che abbiamo in testa (2019) as a case study. Following is an interview with the author about women’s writing and representation in contemporary Italian literature. Both the teaching considerations and the key aspects of the interview support the use of literary works by Italian women writers of migrant origin to teach Italian as an L2/FL

"Teaching Italian as a second language through digital storytelling. Students’ perceptions towards izi.TRAVEL"

The use of technology-enhanced language learning, representing an urgent issue due to the Covid-19 pandemic, has also been promoted by many studies in second language acquisition. Nevertheless, research in this field is only partially developed for the teaching of Italian as a second language (L2) within the university context and for investigating students’ perceptions. This article presents an action research project on the use of izi.TRAVEL, a website housing more than 15,000 audio guides for touring various sites in cities around the world. The aim of the study is to contribute to developing didactic practices relative to Italian as an L2 through digital storytelling, in order to raise and foster students’ linguistic and digital skills. Participants were a small group of students studying Italian as an L2 as part of a master’s program at an Italian university. Data were collected through a questionnaire, a focus group, and students’ multimodal artifacts. Results show the positive impact of project participation on students’ attitudes and perceived learning outcomes, as well as improvements in linguistic, cultural, environmental, and digital competences

Participatory approach for integrated basin planning with focus on disaster risk reduction : the case of the Limpopo river

This paper defends the idea that a participatory approach is a suitable method for basin planning integrating both water and land aspects. Assertions made are based on scientific literature review and corroborated by field experience and research carried out in the Limpopo River basin, a transboundary river located in southern Africa which is affected by periodical floods. The paper explains how a basin strategic plan can be drafted and disaster risk reduction strategies derived by combining different types of activities using a bottom-up approach, despite an institutional context which operates through traditional top-down mechanisms. In particular, the "Living with Floods" experience in the lower Limpopo River, in Mozambique, is described as a concrete example of a disaster adaptation measure resulting from a participatory planning exercise. In conclusion, the adopted method and obtained results are discussed and recommendations are formulated for potential replication in similar contexts of the developing world

The State of Addis Ababa 2017: the Addis Ababa we want

The State of Addis Ababa 2017 report is aimed at providing a comprehensive assessment of existing socioeconomic and environmental conditions in the city, shedding light on the impacts of on-going fast paced urbanization. The report addresses policy makers and city planners and makes bold recommendations on how resources can be strategically developed and managed to sustainably meet the needs of the urban population of today and the future, improve the short- and long-term wellbeing of citizens and transform Addis Ababa into the city that the citizenry wants

“Leggere e vedere l’italiano e l’Italia. Insegnare lingua, cultura e letteratura italiane L2/LS attraverso il cinema”

L’efficacia dell’uso dell’input filmico per la didattica della lingua e della cultura italiane L2/LS è attestata da numerosi studi. Il presente articolo intende estendere questa riflessione all’impiego delle sequenze cinematografiche per avvicinare alla lettura dei testi letterari. L’obiettivo è quello di promuovere l’utilizzo del cinema per insegnare la lingua, la cultura e la letteratura italiane L2/LS. A partire dalla giornata di formazione della Scuola Estiva Itals del 7 luglio 2020, nell’articolo si esamineranno le potenzialità e le criticità legate all’uso glottodidattico dell’input filmico. In seguito, si presenteranno le fasi dell’Unità di Acquisizione (UdA) strutturate sulla visione delle sequenze cinematografiche assieme a una selezione di tecniche didattiche. Infine, si proporrà un’UdA esemplificativa basata su “Una questione privata”, film di Paolo e Vittorio Taviani (2017) ispirato all’omonimo romanzo di Beppe Fenoglio (1963)

"La canción para la educación literaria"

The current essay deals with the proposal to use the song for literary education. Considering the crisis that literary education has been going through in the last decades, the song represents a possible resource which could act as a ‘bridge’ between literary education and juvenile culture. Therefore, our research aims to present the didactic validity of the song as a potential instrument for literary education, demonstrating it through an exemplification. In order to reach our goal, we must firstly define literary education and its principal aims, secondly, we should consider the song’s potentialities and thirdly, we should point out the main interactions between poetry and song and finally we can present some didactical suggestions for the analysis of the poem A las Brigadas Internacionales by Rafael Alberti that we propose in its musical version by Juan & José. The exemplification represents the students’ arrival point, as they are introduced to the poem through the song and at the end they could be able to critically analyse both the forms (written and sung) in which the poem is represented

Flood analysis of the Limpopo River basin through past evolution reconstruction and a geomorphological approach

This research reconstructs the past evolution of the Limpopo River, a transboundary system located in southeastern Africa, and describes its geomorphological settings through a literature review and field work activities, with the aim of analysing flood hazard in the basin. Major changes have occurred since the late Jurassic-early Cretaceous period due to successive tectonic events. The paper demonstrates that the apparently abandoned drainage conformation of the palaeo-Limpopo in the upper and middle stretches of the river today constitutes preferential flood-prone areas in the case of major rainfall events. An important palaeo-delta is identified in the lower Limpopo, which imposes a particular drainage pattern onto the floodplain in Mozambique and influences the flood dynamics at present. The adopted method is helpful in determining flood hazard in a data-scarce area showing complex fluvial dynamics, and allows for the identification of unsuitable locations for human settlements