ITAL 102: Elementary Italian II

Course Description
Perugia is a wonderful laboratory for learning the Italian language, and the structure of the Italian language program reflects this urban reality. The first week of intensive language instruction immerses you in the Italian language and culture, and introduces you to local routines and life in Perugia, where the opportunity to use the language abounds. This immersion further orients you to studying Italian in Italy, where the communicative approach with Italian only in classroom is practiced in full. Lastly, the week sets the rules and rhythm for the semester and helps to instill an enthusiasm for the Italian language and culture.

This course is the equivalent to a second semester course and is designed for those of you who would like to deepen and broaden your communicative knowledge of the language. The emphasis is on giving you the tools to engage in everyday, routine tasks and to be able to exchange information more confidently on topics related to personal interests, familial relations, work and circumstances in which one finds oneself on a day to day basis. The course begins with a grammatical review to reinforce and build upon the basic grammatical elements introduced in the first semester of study. Various texts, such as letters, newspaper articles, popular songs, film clips and comics, will be used to develop your written and oral linguistic ability, including expanding significantly your vocabulary in areas most closely associated with everyday activities and personal interests. To achieve these goals, the course adopts various classroom activities – listening exercises and games, role-playing, peer correction exercises, and interviewing. In addition, frequent out-of-the-classroom exercises that put you in direct contact with native speakers are employed to increase your integration into the local city life. This dual approach will help you to develop and/or refine your use and understanding of grammatical structures, including:

• Regular and irregular forms of the present tense;
• Direct and indirect pronouns, prepositions, adverbs, and the comparative and superlative forms of adjectives and adverbs;
• The passato prossimo and the imperfetto;
• Future verbal forms;
• The conditionale presente and passato;
• The congiuntivo presente e passato.

Course Structure
• One week of intensive language instruction (20 contact hours)
• 13 regularly scheduled weeks in which the class meets 6 hours per week

Course Objectives
At the end of the semester, you should reach the level A2 + / B1 of the Common European Framework in the four basic competencies: listening, speaking and interacting, reading, and writing. In practice, you will be able to:

• Participate in simple everyday conversations. Interact with native speakers on familiar topics by using slow and relatively basic speech: asking about personal issues, describing places and feelings, and expressing and explaining choices;
• Understand simple messages related to familiar environments (school, job, family, vacation, etc.). Recognize the main points of a more structured speech;
• Read easy texts of different types, including letters, advertisements, job-offers, diary pages and short newspaper articles;
• Write simple texts on personal daily life and past experiences. Describe briefly more general cultural and social issues, using some specialized vocabulary.

Course Materials

• Required Text: Course reader that contains the majority of the reading materials, grammatical units and vocabulary to be covered in the course will be made available. The reader is organized into two parts.
• Supplementary Text: selected exercises and readings from various sources will be handed out periodically.
• Dictionary: you are strongly recommended to purchase an English/Italian, Italian/English dictionary. The library in via Bartolo has a number of dictionaries available for consultation.