Good day,
we could say so much about speaking English as Italians.
If you acquire English as a second language, or third or whatever, it is one more identity you can add to your one/s.
It allows your potentialities to surface, since so many other skills of yours were submerged and a second language is just the tool, sometimes it is just the excuse, to make you observe more, pay grater attention, listen more carefully, write to find out that there are accuracy and style, that can be transferred to your other languages; in case you are Italian, your mother tongue too can improve.
Speaking too, giving any single word an intonation to accompany any speech of yours, becomes that enjoyment the way anything related to English is. It is that one more house you can have and offer to everybody, feeling at home wherever you can hear it spoken.
Something in common, this feeling equal, and making the others feeling the same.
Up to you to continue what English is for you, your past and present experiences, to let our readers know.
It would be a pleasure reading them.
Comparing experiences, what is one of the best things Mike Strevens has ever done? Why? And yours? Why?
He speaks about Italian teachers of English. What does he say about them and what is your general evaluation about English spoken in Italy?
Where did you learn English? How long have you been studying it?
What do you do to improve it? Does it work? How do you evaluate that?
We think that Mike Strevens says something quite true about the common Italians' behaviour when speaking English. Integrating school classes' programs, we see that students tend to be afraid or ashamed to be laughed at, and be seen objects of derision by the others.
We are convinced that the approach to a second language at school should consider it behaviour, not a subject. A language is a matter of life, a lifelong competence, a vehicle for any meaning you want to communicate and talk about. With the teacher acting in English, it should be perceveid as such. A language is you and your entire body, the way you feel at ease with it.
Read the article, think of it, write a comment for us to read and talk about when back in class.
Thanks everybody, enjoy your English
Anna - Coordinator
Source: Speak Up, March 2014
Comments
Certainly it is. English language is confined in our classes. There aren’t many occasions to speak English in our daily lives. Maybe things are changing. I am thinking to the WEB, to people who leave looking for a job abroad, ... Anyway for speaking a good English we should travel, and live far from Italy!
At work I read a lot of texts written in English (specifications, manuals, emails, etc.) but I don’t have any direct contacts with foreign people, so I don’t have the opportunity to speak English. Occasionally I write something in English language.
3. Do you know any Italians speaking good English?
Yes, some friends of mine. They live and work abroad.
4. What do they do?
My friend Livio actually lives in Sultanate of Oman. He is a chemical engineer. He lived in England, in Holland, in the United States, in Canada, in Thailand. He speaks English, Dutch, German, French, Spanish, Russian and ... Mandarin, too! He’s a prodigy!
5. How did they learn English?
He made perfect his English in England, while he was majoring in Chemical Engineering. He studied in England for two years.
I have been studying English since the 1970s! Oh my God!
7. Is there any difference after learning English in your life?
I’m studying English and Spanish. Sometime I’m a little bit confused because in my mind occur foreign sentences. I “think” in foreign language.
8. Is there anything new happening in your life?
It doesn’t seem to me. Perhaps, I am more absorbed in what I’m doing.
9. Do you like new things? What role do you think they play in one’s life?
Generally I don’t like new things. They require new resources, new efforts. But, if anything happens, which is the flavour of our lives? In any case, new things happen!
Normally in school we learn the fondamental of English and this is good if we need the knowledge only to travell. Then if we think that it is important for work there are two possibility. The most important and of course very succesfull is to do three-month school in England living in a family. If it isn't possible is absolutely necessary to do an intensive three-month of school in Italy. My experience was the first and I spent two summer in Davies's school living in family. After in my job was very important because for 25 years I worked in the hotel industry.
Regarding the knowledge of English young Italians people are very skill as it is demostrated by the many Italians who work abroad with tasks at the highest level. We must realize that in this global world English is the only Language spoken in every job either technical or financial or commercial.
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