Portraits of students from Istituto Omnicomprensivo
The most recent Erasmus project in our school took us to Orte, Italy, a wonderful little commune not too far from the Eternal City. We met the students of Istituto Omnicomprensivo on our second day, when they welcomed us and gave us a tour of their wonderful school. We got to see the labs that they use for their science classes, and told us that, aside from computer science, all the other areas of science share the same lab.
When we got to the group activities, a certain fact became quite apparent to me and my fellow students: there was a noticeable difference in the level of English proficiency between us and the students from the Institute. At first, we believed that, just like us, they were just more comfortable speaking to their own colleagues than to the strangers in front of them. It was quickly revealed to us that that was not the case. They were quite eager to learn from us, to see what differentiated us and also what made us alike. The problem was a slightly inconvenient language barrier. They have English classes, well-taught, captivating classes, their grades in which being the sole criteria for their selection in the Erasmus project, but they lack the need to use the language in their day to day life.
Italian, as most languages in Western Europe, is thriving in its country of origin, for a few different reasons. Firstly, Italy has a thriving translation industry, that ensures not only that most of the content served to italian audiences is dubbed in italian, but also that it’s localized for their own cultural context. Also, the students presented to us who their favorite content creators are, revealing to us Italy’s vibrant content creation scene, particularly in music, most of them saying that their favourite artist is the italian rapper, Blanco. One final reason would be that the biggest employers in Italy are italian companies, not multinationals, thus driving down even further the need to know english as an international language.
Overall, the students were very welcoming, open to learn about our culture while also teaching us about their own. I hope we’ll be able to do the same when they’ll come visit us shortly.