Agenda

Nel corso del mese di novembre 2017, due studiosi di fama internazionale saranno ospiti del Venice Accessibility Lab presso il Dipartimento di Studi Linguistici e Culturali Comparati per condividere con studiosi, studenti, insegnanti e con la cittadinanza, i risultati più recenti della loro ricerca e riflessioni per le politiche linguistiche del futuro, in un ciclo di seminari che si terranno il 10 e 24 novembre, sul tema: Educazione linguistica, identità, e inclusione. Il ruolo della ricerca nelle decisioni politiche.

João Marques da Costa - Universidade Nova de Lisboa, República Portughesa, secreátario de estado da educação
GENERATIVE APPROACHES TO LANGUAGE ACQUISITION AT SCHOOL
More than 50 years of research on how language comes to children gives us immense insights on how language works, on how language develops, on how language skills can be stimulated, and on how language impairment can be detected.
Yet, education systems absorb very little of the results of this rich amount of information, and language teaching benefits very little from the generative approaches to language acquisition.
The purpose of this talk is to bridge results coming from generative approaches to language acquisition with the challenges education systems are facing nowadays.
There is an intense international discussion on the goals of education, critically involving the set of competences to develop in students, the need for education to become more inclusive, and the need to match the 2030 SD Goals as defined by the United Nations.
I will address some of these topics, by illustrating how generative approaches to language acquisition can and should help promote a better education. In particular, I will propose a reflection on the following areas:
a) Language awareness and knowledge of language – grammar as a key area to promote better performance, creative thinking and problem-solving skills. This will be based on results on student capacity to assess the innate linguistic knowledge.
b) Definition of areas of intervention – results on milestones in language development must influence decisions on what to teach, when to teach and how to teach. I will illustrate this with examples coming from the acquisition of dependencies and clitics.
c) Inclusion – awareness on language properties, explicit focus on multilingual populations, and a good knowledge on language impairment is a critical aspect for the design of inclusive policies and attain education for all. Some examples of activities involving awareness on language diversity will be presented.
Specific challenges will be presented regarding the interaction between academics and policy-makers, and teachers’ training needs.

Il 24 novembre h. 16 a Ca’ Bembo, aula A, Gabriele Iannàccaro, professore di linguistica dell’Università di Stoccolma, partirà dai primi risultati del progetto Fp7 MIME (Mobility and Integration in a Multilingual Europe) per mettere a fuoco alcuni punti rilevanti per lo studio e per la pratica dell’integrazione scolastica degli alunni provenienti da famiglie mobili in Europa, in una conferenza dal titolo Mobilità, identità e educazione linguistica in Europa.