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The model. The ASU Italian faculty revised the Intermediate Italian courses to follow the model of the German Department at Georgetown University, which had developed a content-based curriculum based on the latest research in second language acquisition (http://www3.georgetown.edu/departments/german/programs/curriculum/).

A content-based approach. This research suggests that a curriculum with an emphasis on content, rather than just form, helps adult learners develop the “multiple literacies” they need to become sophisticated second-language users. The decision to adopt this content-based approach has required changing all levels of the curriculum.

The first step involved choosing what “genres,” both oral and written, would be covered in both Intermediate courses and then choosing “texts” that model those genres. Here we adhered closely to the Georgetown model by adopting texts from all different media including literature, film, newspapers, music and recordings of everyday speech. Students have access to those texts through this website. We continue to use a standard grammar text as a reference work but the courses’ structure is based on the oral and written traditions in which we want the students to become proficient.

ITA 201. The first intermediate course, Italian 201, is structured around different linguistic genres such as the diary and the fable. Students first learn the characteristics of the genre through the study of its conventions, both thematic and formal, and then create their own texts in the same tradition.

ITA 202. The second intermediate course, Italian 202, focuses on certain cultural “genres” or values of Italian culture such as “familialism” and regional diversity. In this course students learn to summarize more abstract texts and then express opinions about different aspects of Italian culture, and ultimately to compare them to their own cultural values.