This paper focuses on the suitability of self-narrative strategies in second-language teaching of migrant women so as to acknowledge and enhance their plurilingual competence and facilitate their identity (re)construction process in the country of immigration. Implementing ready-made notional-functional syllabi and tailored textbooks for migrant women has its advantages but also risks confining them to a preconceived role. This leads the author to consider widening communicative L2 teaching praxis to encompass self-narration within the framework of a critical feminist approach to language teaching. Drawing on narratives of migrant women and class observation of Italian L2, the paper then discusses the extent to which language autobiography and an overall self-narrative methodology may bring a change into the multilingual classroom, by complementing the present “immersive” approach to second language and culture, with a teaching modality favouring the emersion of language affectivity, learners’ personal histories and voices in/through the L2.
From L2 immersion to subjectivity emersion: self-narration in teaching migrant women Italian
COGNIGNI, EDITH
2012-01-01
Abstract
This paper focuses on the suitability of self-narrative strategies in second-language teaching of migrant women so as to acknowledge and enhance their plurilingual competence and facilitate their identity (re)construction process in the country of immigration. Implementing ready-made notional-functional syllabi and tailored textbooks for migrant women has its advantages but also risks confining them to a preconceived role. This leads the author to consider widening communicative L2 teaching praxis to encompass self-narration within the framework of a critical feminist approach to language teaching. Drawing on narratives of migrant women and class observation of Italian L2, the paper then discusses the extent to which language autobiography and an overall self-narrative methodology may bring a change into the multilingual classroom, by complementing the present “immersive” approach to second language and culture, with a teaching modality favouring the emersion of language affectivity, learners’ personal histories and voices in/through the L2.I documenti in IRIS sono protetti da copyright e tutti i diritti sono riservati, salvo diversa indicazione.