Fabiana, Italy
Italians are famous for not knowing how to speak English.
When I lived in England, I thought the stereotype of Italians abroad, who rely solely on hand gestures and macaronic English to make themselves understood, was denigratory and prejudicial, and I spent a lot of time and effort contradicting the cliché.
Upon moving back to Italy and starting my ELT career, however, I had to stand corrected.
Some of my students would go out of their way to express a concept without using language (but rather, their hands) or simplifying it to the point it sounded like Italian words with English desinences. It didn’t take long for me to realise that they were afraid of making mistakes. This was true across all levels and ages: even my higher-level students took part in this self-fulfilling prophecy, engaging in linguistic self-sabotage to avoid speaking ‘like an Italian’.
The root cause of this, in my opinion, is the attachment to a particular style of teaching, and consequently learning, present in Italian public schools – riddled with tests, exams and formal ‘interrogations’ (students standing alone in front of the whole class answering questions the teacher fires at them). A fixed mindset is the rule, mistakes are perceived as the end of the world and grade-induced anxiety is one of the top reasons young people end up despising their time as students. Learning has become a heavy chore, as opposed to the moment of collaboration and judgement-free exploration and growth it should be.
How does one teach in such an environment, where fear of failure prevents students from trying in the first place?
I found theatre to be a good answer to this question. With my background in theatre studies, I adapted lots of drama games and exercises, which were originally aimed at increasing confidence, developing focus and improving memory, to have a linguistic aim too. In my classes we explore language in a way that doesn’t revolve around the meaning of words itself, but the baggage language carries in structures we use every day, the otherness of it – its intersection with conventions of social life. Grammar structures and functional language are explored moving around the classroom, role-playing and pretending; Stanislavski’s ‘magic if’ leads the enquiry-based lesson plan; Boal’s community theatre framework transforms the students from spectators to active users of the language, and a simple vocabulary exercise becomes a chance for them to use lexical chunks creatively and in context.
Understanding language turns into an ‘inside job’, something that happens because students are performing tasks to understand – and not just to pass a test.
There are two main consequences of this (literally) dramatic shift: students are relieved from grade-induced anxiety and they worry about making mistakes less, because the classroom setting has long been forgotten.
If we want our students to learn and use English successfully, we must leave aseptic, standardised learning habitats behind, step into the real world, and just play.
