{"id":154,"date":"2014-07-29T11:06:43","date_gmt":"2014-07-29T11:06:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.soton.ac.uk\/italydiy\/?p=154"},"modified":"2014-08-29T16:09:25","modified_gmt":"2014-08-29T16:09:25","slug":"university-of-southampton-italian-field-trips","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.soton.ac.uk\/italydiy\/2014\/07\/29\/university-of-southampton-italian-field-trips\/","title":{"rendered":"University of southampton Italian field trips"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/blog.soton.ac.uk\/italydiy\/files\/2014\/07\/viva-litalia.png\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-178\" src=\"http:\/\/blog.soton.ac.uk\/italydiy\/files\/2014\/07\/viva-litalia.png\" alt=\"students and tutors holding italian flag\" width=\"1024\" height=\"768\" srcset=\"https:\/\/blog.soton.ac.uk\/italydiy\/files\/2014\/07\/viva-litalia.png 1024w, https:\/\/blog.soton.ac.uk\/italydiy\/files\/2014\/07\/viva-litalia-300x225.png 300w, https:\/\/blog.soton.ac.uk\/italydiy\/files\/2014\/07\/viva-litalia-624x468.png 624w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px\" \/><\/a>Courtesy of Simon Blackmore, Oxford ( all rights reserved)<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"line-height: 1.714285714;font-size: 1rem\">This space\u00a0is intended to showcase my students&#8217; experiences and mine whilst on field trip to Italy; to raise awareness about the benefits and impact of field trips as a complement to language learning and also to intellectual dialogue and development.<\/span><\/p>\n<p>The title of this blog: Italy DIY, oltre alla pizza c&#8217;e&#8217; di piu&#8217; (there is more to Italy than just pizza..) \u00a0is meant to highlight the personal and individual journey that each student will be exploring whilst abroad, according to their own interests. No journey will be the same, however each of them will contribute to expand knowledge and inform future students of Italian at University of Southampton.<\/p>\n<p>I have been teaching Italian accelerated courses 1+2 ab-initio for few years, taking students with no knowledge of Italian language to a level where they are able to use their language skills in real life situations in Italy.<\/p>\n<p>However there is evidence of a substantial gap of knowledge related to culture, lifestyle and practical everyday activities which students are very eager to compensate.<\/p>\n<p>Every year , half way through semester two, I witness\u00a0students&#8217; demands ( borderline begging&#8230;. \ud83d\ude42 \u00a0to arrange a trip and spend some time in Italy to test\u00a0their newly acquired language skills.<\/p>\n<p>By then in fact, \u00a0their language skills have reached a surprising level, considering they have only been studying Italian for few\u00a0months (the beauty of accelerated learning&#8230;:)<\/p>\n<p>Although students can be quite industrious and creative when it comes to arranging trips abroad, I realized, since we started our field trips at University of Southampton, that students&#8217; requests are\u00a0based on few principles which practitioners in charge should not underestimate.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Field trips\u00a0are seen by students as:<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>\u00a0end of year celebration of achievements in learning<\/li>\n<li><span style=\"color: #000000\">\u00a0enhancement of a learning community which has been established in class throughout the year<\/span><\/li>\n<li>\n<p style=\"color: #000000\">\u00a0a more spontaneous teaching and learning experience which allows\u00a0students to engage multiple modalities, not necessarily linked to their own\u00a0discipline but branching out to new areas and embracing interdisciplinarity<\/p>\n<\/li>\n<li>\n<p style=\"color: #000000\">a student-centered , hands on experience, far away from the limitations\u00a0of language and cultural\u00a0learning in the classroom: the focus here is the world at large<\/p>\n<\/li>\n<li>unique relationships developed outside the classroom among students themselves and and among students and teachers<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>The points above constitute the basis and the reason to be of University of Southampton italian field trips and although still young at heart (we have been running trips only for two years) this experience is proving very positive and more successful from one year to another.<\/p>\n<p>These trips have the potential to facilitate and enhance students&#8217; research skills by making them comparing and evaluating authentic resources and having hands on experiences in the target language country, fulfilling the intercultural aspect of foreign language studies.<\/p>\n<p>The deeper value of this project lies in the understanding of the cultural aspect which is inseparable from language learning \u00a0and is clearly highlighted in this HSBC advert:<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"HSBC&#039; ad--Wrong flower\" width=\"625\" height=\"469\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/8jrbu0lCWjk?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Courtesy of Simon Blackmore, Oxford ( all rights reserved) This space\u00a0is intended to showcase my students&#8217; experiences and mine whilst on field trip to Italy; to raise awareness about the benefits and impact of field trips as a complement to language learning and also to intellectual dialogue and development. The title of this blog: Italy [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":53003,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":true,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-154","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.soton.ac.uk\/italydiy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/154","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.soton.ac.uk\/italydiy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.soton.ac.uk\/italydiy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.soton.ac.uk\/italydiy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/53003"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.soton.ac.uk\/italydiy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=154"}],"version-history":[{"count":20,"href":"https:\/\/blog.soton.ac.uk\/italydiy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/154\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":167,"href":"https:\/\/blog.soton.ac.uk\/italydiy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/154\/revisions\/167"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.soton.ac.uk\/italydiy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=154"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.soton.ac.uk\/italydiy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=154"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.soton.ac.uk\/italydiy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=154"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}