Although Italian is not spoken regularly in Malta, many people are exposed to this language via the media. In fact, it is clear that the presence of the Italian media, especially Italian television, has breathed new life into a language, the active use of which in Malta had declined during the first decades of the twentieth century. Consequently, it is highly relevant to investigate the extent and the impact of the linguistic input from Italian television on the individuals who are exposed to it. In this study I collected data from two groups of 14-15 year-old students. One group consisted of students who had been learning Italian at school for four years and were therefore exposed to the language in formal settings. The other group consisted of students who had never learnt Italian formally, either at school or elsewhere. In this group there were a number of students who watched Italian television programmes regularly. None of the students included in the groups had ever had the opportunity to speak Italian regularly. Most of the students who had never learnt Italian in formal settings were capable of narrating a story in Italian orally and also of completing correctly a number of written sentences in Italian, just as their counterparts who learn Italian at school were capable of doing. The results show that the students who watch Italian television programmes very frequently (more than three hours daily) can speak the language and that they have a well developed verbal system in Italian since a number of them are capable of using correctly tense and aspect despite the absence of formal instruction in the L2.peer-reviewe
