Professor Ada Bertini Publishes Article on Teaching of Italian Phonetics

Professor Ada Bertini

Professor Ada Bertini

Professor Ada Bertini, who teaches Italian language at JCU, recently published an article in the prestigious journal Bollettino Itals on the teaching of phonetics in Italian language classes.

The title of Professor Bertini’s article is “L’importanza di un inserimento più strutturato dell’insegnamento della fonetica nelle classi universitarie americane: efficacia e limiti delle nuove tecnologie” (The importance of a more structured teaching of phonetics in American university classrooms: effectiveness and limits of new technologies).

This research was carried out at John Cabot University in Rome with a group of American students at the B1 level, with little knowledge of phonetics.

Here is Professor Bertini’s abstract:
This research was carried out at John Cabot University in Rome with a group of American students at the B1 level, with little knowledge of phonetics.

The basic hypothesis of this work is that a more structured study of phonetics can contribute in a substantial way to the learning of the Italian language. In addition, the use of multimedia is fundamental in the teaching of phonetics, because it simplifies the reproduction of sounds and facilitates practice and dialogue among students and between students and teacher.

This research has led to: the evaluation of the reaction to the introduction to phonetics, by both students and teachers; the experimentation of didactic tools and techniques to improve the pronunciation of several sounds that are problematic for English-speaking students, with the aim of improving both written and oral communication; the possibility of guiding students toward the evaluation and self evaluation of their fluency and that of others while encouraging the instructor to teach phonetics as part of the syllabus.

The article was originally presented as a paper at the 2013 Conference of the American Association of Teachers of Italian (AATI), which took place in Strasbourg (France) from May 30th to June 2nd.

Read the article (in Italian).

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