Languages News - Italian

Buon Anno – Happy New Year

Buon Anno a tutti. Wishing all families a very happy New Year.

We welcome back all our students and especially welcome our Year 7 students to the college.  We would also like to welcome Hayley Wilson and Monica Sestito who have joined our team this year. 

It has been wonderful to see the number of students selecting to study Italian on the rise. Learning a second (or third) language has many benefits and is always a lot of fun.

I often get asked by parents how they can help their children when they themselves do not understand the language. Parents, you may not know Italian, however, you can still support your child in their learning. Italian is a phonetic language and although you may not know how to pronounce the word you will recognise if your child is providing the correct term or is spelling it correctly. As we say to our students, “Successful language acquisition occurs only if there is continuous contact with the language.” Students need only spend 10 minutes each night reviewing what has been taught. It will develop greater vocabulary recall and grammar application.

Students may not always be given written homework to complete, however, we advise that they revise their lessons, learn vocabulary and practise the grammar that has been introduced.

A number of revising strategies can be used: 

• writing out cue cards
• making charts/flashcards/vocabulary lists (sticking them on walls)
• recording the vocabulary and repeating what has been said, spelling the vocab
• covering the Italian and providing the English (and vice versa)
• redoing exercises completed in class
• correcting errors made in tasks-writing sentences-reading from their text books
• watching programs in Italian (YouTube is great for this)
• using the many online interactive websites (Quizlet, Kahootz, Wordwall)  that  are provided to students via their lesson plan
• using language Apps (Duo Lingo etc) 

These are just a few. Every student learns in a different way and has to find what works for them. 

If you have any questions about your child’s progress or about the program in general, please feel free to contact your child’s teacher.

Over the course of the year, we will communicate events and activities we will be running. We encourage all students of Italian to take part in them.

Joyce Conidoni

Italian- Learning Domain Leader