The communicative approach and the challenge of online teaching from DILIT in Rome

Written by Luigi Micarelli and Luisa Guerrini (DILIT Teaching Team) 28 4月 2020

The communicative approach and the challenge of online teaching from DILIT in Rome

We have been in shutdown for over a month now. Spring is in the air and only the gardener visits the school to water the plants.

We are online...

We weren’t ready. We weren’t prepared, neither mentally nor practically but after the initial shock, we looked each other in the eye, collected our thoughts and told each other “what we are good at doing in the real class we should be able to do in the virtual class”.

Whether we have now reached a certain competence is a question that only our online students can answer but on the whole things seem to be going well.

Certainly, things are different: the setting, the internet connection, the distance, the energy and enthusiasm of the class which is transmitted to those less motivated students, the teacher’s view of the class as a whole.

During our countless debates and meetings, we teachers have been going over and comparing our online experiences, finding feasible solutions to critical issues, experimenting with new techniques.

But ever since our first meeting there has been a question which lingers in our minds: “do we need to reach a compromise between the Communicative approach to language teaching and to teaching online?”

We have absolutely no intention here of presenting a thesis on the Communicative approach to language teaching, we would just like to make some points clear and highlight some others:

The teacher’s job is to prepare students as communicators (both in oral and written language). Very few language schools and textbooks fail to mention the term Communicativein their presentations. And then there are others who forge new terms to express the same concept.

It is said that we are passing through a radical change and it would be obviously short-sighted to deny this. But at the same time, it would be wrong for us not to hold on firmly to the principles we believe in. It is likely that in the near future new procedures and techniques more appropriate for online teaching will be introduced. 

Obviously we will evaluate them and take what best fits our concept of teaching, without giving up what we consider a source of satisfaction for both teachers and students.

As long as we teachers are fully aware and firmly convinced of our way of teaching, we are sure that the method, the approach, the philosophy, and the term communicativewill cope with the challenge of online teaching. Before and after March 2020.

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DILIT, established in 1974, is one of the most prestigious Italian language schools in Italy offering a great variety of Italian language courses all year round. Each year around approx. 1600 international students choose to attend our Italian courses to live an “Italian” experience.

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