Dimmi come parli! : una ricerca sulle competenze di alcuni tratti morfologici nel parlato in italiano L2 a Malta

Abstract

In the learning process of a foreign language, students may find it difficult to put into practice certain language-structure rules in their spoken production. This could be due to a wide range of factors, amongst which individual's exposure to the language itself. Keeping this in mind, I have chosen to study the spoken ability of Maltese students in Italian, taking into consideration both students who learn Italian at school and others who do not learn the language formally but are exposed to it through the media. The students involved in this study are 13/14 year-old girls in the Form 3 classes, from the Girls' Gozo College. I obtained information about the general perception of Italian through the distribution of a questionnaire to all Form 3 classes attending this college. This enabled me to choose a sub-sample of 12 subjects from whom I elicited data through a visual stimulus consisting of two short picture stories in order to investigate their morphological competence in the acquisition of the verb system in Italian. This enabled me to shed light on features regarding verb tense and aspect that are present in their oral production. My discussion of these features is based on interlanguage theory and on Italian L2 developmental sequences as documented in studies carried out on Italian Applied Linguistics in the recent years.