Every year ESN Modena volunteers organize a Course of Italian Language and Culture to offer their exchange students the opportunity to learn new skills to be useful in a professional future. More specifically, the course aims at teaching the students the grammatical and lexical basis of the Italian language, mixed with cultural curiosities and traditions related to the different parts of Italy. This way, exchange students are able to develop a new set of skills that they may apply to their professional of academic career.
Normally, the course would take place of ESN Modena office, however, due to the COVID-19 emergency, we decided to hold an online version of it.
The participants to this activity would like to improve their language skills related to Italian and learn more about the Italian culture. Normally, they study Italian at their home university or came to Italy on purpose to learn it, so that they can be able to speak and understand our language properly. Generally, the main reasons that lead exchange students to subscribe to our course are the wish to better integrate with the communnity they live in, develop a new skill that may be useful when applying for a job, or to improve their general knowledge of Italian in terms of lexicon and flexibility, so that their academic career will benefit from it.
Althourgh the course is online, our students are satisfied with the results obtained and have created a good relationship with their professors, in that online classes (on Skype) are one to one. Also, by excersing on the PDF version of the book and following the suggestions of our volunteers, they are able to make improvements that involve all the levels: writing, speaking, reading, listening.
For us, as volunteers and teachers, is a satisfacion as well, in that we see the enthusiasm with which our exchange students participate to this activities and make many steps forward.