Teaching and learning Italian language in the United Kingdom

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INTRODUCTION 
The approach to the study of a foreign language is linked to a series 
of factors of different nature. A very important variable is certainly the 
appeal that the mothertongue country of the language in question is able to 
exercise on the masses and individuals. The image that one country gives of 
itself abroad is therefore crucial. 
The aim of this work is to analyze how Italian language has spread in 
the United Kingdom, from the phenomenon of immigration to the 
introduction of Italian in the English educational system, which is now 
considered an elite interest. 
My work is composed of three chapters in which I analyze the issue 
of the teaching and learning of Italian in the United Kingdom from different 
points of view. 
The first chapter locates the whole phenomenon in a historical 
perspective. The diffusion of Italian all over the world, including the United 
Kingdom, starts from the migration of huge masses of Italians towards 
other countries. Starting from this social factor, in this chapter the 
consequent interest in Italian also by autochthonous people is analyzed. 
The second chapter highlights the initiatives of the Italian 
government in order to preserve and stimulate the diffusion of our 
language, including non-institutional associations working together for the 
same purpose. 
The third and final chapter has a more interactive nature. It is, in fact, 
a comparative analysis based on the results of a questionnaire which I sent 
to two prestigious English universities, Oxford and Bath. The students, in 
fact, were asked to judge their Italian language and culture lessons, in order 
to give us a real idea of how Italian is taught in English universities. 
The questionnaire of the survey carried out and all the documents 
used are available in the appendix.
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1. The impact of Italian immigration in England 
It has been pointed out that the establishment of a significant ethnic 
minority in Britain was neither planned nor anticipated by policy makers. 
Apart from the nineteenth-century internal migration from Ireland and the 
settlements of Jews in East End of London around the first years of the 
twentieth century, Britain had a limited experience in dealing with 
immigrants before the seventies.  
With the end of World War Two, large numbers of colonial 
servicemen decided to settle in Britain, despite several efforts made to 
encourage them to return home. For its reconstruction after the war, Britain 
needed labour and started recruiting European political refugees (Estonians, 
Lithuanians, Ukrainians) and unemployed peasants (especially Italians).  
None of these groups of aliens, however, benefited from the rights 
accorded to Commonwealth citizens, and under the Immigration Act of 
1971 the use of work permits ended virtually all primary immigration that 
takes place when a family or a single man moves from one country to 
another in order to improve his economic conditions, and, only after, he 
asks his relatives to join him (the secondary immigration).  
The immigrants who already succeeded in obtaining residence 
demonstrated the birth of the new multi-ethnic British society. Every 
immigrant group had a different ability, and peasants from Southern Italy 
were still concentrated in certain districts which had textile and brick 
industries. No middle class Italians came to live in Britain, except for a few 
diplomats.  
Studies about the movements of Italians to the United Kingdom only 
recently have started to appear.  
      The movement of Italians to Britain is usually divided into three phases: 
 The arrival of well-educated artists, scholars and merchants until the 
beginning of the 20
th
 century;
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 The continuous  movement of people involved in various food 
trades; 
 The recruitment by particular industries in the Southern of Italy after 
Second World War until the mid sixties (Tosi, 1991). 
A rural background and a history of unemployment were the 
common conditions from which these Italians immigrants were escaping. 
Some families settled separately in the large cities, others from the same 
village settled close to industrial communities. When Italian families are 
dispersed, the relation between the parents and their social environment is 
normally complemented by a better disposition towards the English 
community, and the children are encouraged to cultivate a lifestyle linked to 
the new environment. But when many families from the same village settle 
in the same community, there is a tendency to monitor the new generation’s 
loyalty to the village of origin. In this case, the children of the new 
generation realize that the habits and values of their parents and those of 
their new country cannot coexist, and they must choose between the two. 
The major issue concerning the language shift among immigrant 
communities in Britain concentrates on the conflict between the language of 
the old country and that of the new host society. There are countries which 
have only lately achieved political unification with a consequent complex 
situation of language diversity and dialects among agricultural 
communities. 
In addition to many immigrants who developed the “myth of return” 
and maintain a migrant attitude towards the new society, and the few who 
actually encouraged their children to integrate in the new community, there 
was another group of Italian migrants to Britain. This was the group of 
people in the diplomatic service. Except for these groups, Britain generally 
lacked middle class people of Italian origins. 
In considering the social and economic opportunities for the children 
of Italian parents, the function of the school and its curriculum are the two
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most important elements. In England, the treatment of the native language 
of children and the development of their bilingualism can involve different 
strategies in different types of schools. In fact, the value given to Italian 
studies in their curriculum is different if we consider a private school or a 
state one. In fact, even if today Italian language is one of the official EEC 
languages, the language of the largest community of European immigrants 
and the language of a prestigious culture, the teaching of the Italian 
language has always been discontinuous both chronologically and 
geographically. It is possible in fact to certify that in England there was a 
sort of opposition against Italian, which was considered the language of the 
immigrants. When Italian families upon their arrival in England at the 
beginning of the 20
th 
 century found out that the English local schools did 
not intend to teach Italian to their children, the issue of the “Italian school” 
became a great problem for the Italian community. Teaching Italian to the 
children, especially for the parents who were born in Italy, became the main 
means to protect their Italian identity and cultural inheritance; it was also 
considered the most important way to strengthen the bonds with the rest of 
the family back in Italy. The English government justified this kind of 
policy by claiming that the learning of Italian would weaken the learning of 
English and that at home parents should not speak Italian to their children 
because they had to improve their abilities in English. For this reason, 
during the first half of the 20
th
 century, in some areas of great concentration 
of Italian families the ties with the culture of origin was so strong that the 
immigrants decided to establish their own institutions or started to set their 
own Italian classes in clubs and churches, but many also asked for 
professional courses to their consulates. 
In the early sixties, in response to the widespread demand of courses 
of Italian language, the Italian government developed a system of courses 
for the second generation of immigrants which had strong economic 
supports from the EEC Fund. The aim was to provide extracurricular 
assistance in order to integrate the host country’s education with the culture
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of origin, giving more or less a complete education in case of reintegration 
with the home school system. These courses were managed by Italian 
teachers recruited in Italy whose aim was also to promote the knowledge 
and respect for the traditions of the home country among the second-
generation immigrants. In spite of this, British educational policies in the 
latest decades did not consider the problem of language diversity in Italy. 
Even if parents were committed to the teaching of Italian to their children, it 
is impossible not to consider the confusion between Italian as the official 
national language and the Italian dialect of origin. Probably, the difficulty 
of dialect speakers in learning standard Italian was underestimated. Even 
the teachers of these private courses, who were recruited among the 
unemployed graduates and lacked specific training, were often resulted 
tolerant towards the influence of the dialect. 
For this reason, nowadays an important issue is: what exactly is the 
Standard Italian? Who is able to speak it? How many teachers know it and 
are able to teach it? Considering Italian as a second language it is possible 
to underline three related issues between: 
 The Italian language taught by the teacher, which is generally a 
cultivated version of the language influenced by the dialect of the 
teacher’s region of origin; 
 The Italian language spoken at home, frequently with many dialectal 
inflections; 
 The other regional versions of the Italian language spoken when 
using audio-visual supports during the courses. 
Today, considering the groups of learners interested in the study of Italian 
in England, it is possible to affirm that they belong to the upper and middle 
class and this is the main reason of the diffusion of Italian courses more in 
private schools than in state ones. This phenomenon underlines the prestige 
of the Italian language and culture in English society and education. In fact, 
the teaching of the Italian language is surely more widespread in