Dear Loredana. We have had a similar experience to Wits's in that
with the change-over to "programmes" and in an attempt to open our
literature and culture courses to students with no knowledge of
Italian, we have ceased to teach these courses in the target
language. In the past, lectures had to be delivered at dictation
pace, with the help of transparancies; students also relied heavily
on criticism in Italian, at times copied straight out of the texts
and their assignemnts showed little if any originality. Marking these
was almost impossible as one had to draw an arbitrary line between
what one thought the student was trying to say and what the student
actually wrote. With few exceptions, the students with a better
mastery of the language obtained higher marks than those students who
knew the text well and wanted to say something original about it. I
do not personally think that the loss of ability on the students'
parts to express themselves in the literary language is serious. We
have made up for this by stressing more practical, sectoral
languages, commercial and business, tourism related phraseology,
linguistic terminology and so on. The basic question I think, is
whether or not we are breeding exclusively a future generation of
academics in Italian studies, or more practically and generally
responding to the need for Italian as a practical tool that can be
used in a living and money earning situation. Your research sounds
interesting and I hope that you will let me read it when completed.
Nelia Saxby.
Nelia Saxby
Italian Studies
University of Cape Town
Private Bag Rondebosch 7700
South Africa
Phone: +27 21 650 3058
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