ITAL 311 S: Intensive Italian through Culture: Advanced Intermediate

Note: This course was formerly ITLN 311S.

Course Description
This advanced intermediate course is specifically designed for those of you who have achieved an intermediate level of Italian and wish to deepen your knowledge and understanding of the Italian language. To achieve this goal, you will work with Italian texts of various types (e.g., narrative and literary excerpts, newspaper articles, film clips, and segments from television shows); engage in guided activities; participate in out-of-the-classroom activities that require them to conduct “street” interviews, gather direct testimonies on different aspects of contemporary life, and engage in short surveys, all with the aim of encouraging you to interact as much as possible with the city; and will be asked to reflect on each of these activities through preparing short oral accounts and essays. Through these varied exercises you will come in contact with the authentic written and spoken language in a variety of forms through which you can develop your skills in writing, reading, listening, and speaking; you will enrich your vocabulary, paying particular attention to the study of idiomatic expressions, modes of speaking, and proverbs; and you will advance your understanding of several grammatical and morphological aspects of the language. Lastly, you will be exposed to various cultural aspects (such as political sub-cultures, cinema, and music) that define Italian culture in a manner that fosters further understanding and practice of the language.

Course Structure
ITAL 311 S meets four days per week (Mon-Thur) and consists of a morning program of three hours of in-class grammar study, followed by two hours of exercises and conversation in the afternoon. In the evenings and sometimes on Fridays, cultural activities and lectures in Italian are scheduled. For details of these events, please see the accompanying description of the liberal arts cultural component to the program at the end of the syllabus.

Main Grammar Points
The course will begin with a quick review of ITAL 211 S grammar and thereafter cover the following grammatical points:

• Passato e trapassato remoto
• La concordanza dei tempi dell’indicativo
• Usi di CI e NE
• La concordanza dei tempi del congiuntivo
• Congiunzioni coordinative e subordinative
• Imperativo Indiretto
• Pronomi relativi
• Pronomi e aggettivi indefiniti
• Condizionale passato: “il futuro nel passato”
• Periodo Ipotetico
• Forma passiva e impersonale
• Modi Indefiniti
• Discorso diretto e indiretto

Course Objectives
At the end of the session, students should reach the level B2/B2+ of the Common European Framework in the four basic competencies: listening, speaking and interacting, reading, and writing. (In some cases a student may achieve C1 in the reading and writing competencies.) In practice, you will be able to:

• Interact with a native speaker without too much effort in both formal and informal settings;
• Produce clear texts on various topics and express a personal opinion on current affairs and events, offering both the advantages and the disadvantages of different positions;
• Understand the principal ideas of a text containing concrete and abstract topics;
• Understand radio and television passages of the following types: announcements, advertisements, news briefings, short comic passages, current affairs programming, interviews, and talk shows;
• Acquire a basic vocabulary of 1500 words and a smaller specialized vocabulary tied to one’s own area of study, one’s personal interests, and to the Italian culture and civilization topics covered in class;
• Write texts on familiar topics or those of personal interest and on aspects of culture and contemporary society (in the form of brief compositions, summaries, informal and formal letters, and short essays and stories);
• Understand diverse aspects of Italian culture and reflect on the comparison between his/her own culture and that of the host country.

Course Materials
– Required Text: A Course Reader that contains the materials to be covered in the course will be made available
– Supplementary Text: Selected exercises and readings from various textbooks and workbooks will be handed out periodically.
– Dictionary: Students are strongly recommended to purchase an English/Italian, Italian/English dictionary.  The library also has a number of dictionaries available for consultation.