{"id":97,"date":"2012-10-23T06:51:09","date_gmt":"2012-10-23T10:51:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rickzullo.com\/?p=97"},"modified":"2021-11-12T21:54:11","modified_gmt":"2021-11-12T20:54:11","slug":"teaching-english-to-italians","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/rickzullo.com\/teaching-english-to-italians\/","title":{"rendered":"\u201cTink aboot dis\u201d When Teaching English to Italians"},"content":{"rendered":"

Teaching English to Italians<\/h2>\n

I really love my job, teaching English to Italians.\u00a0 Not only is it enjoyable and rewarding, but I meet a lot of great people from all walks of life here in Rome.\u00a0 The pay is decent (well, halfway decent) and it\u2019s not too stressful.\u00a0 However, it\u2019s not without some challenges at times.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
An American Teaching English to Italians<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

One challenge involves teaching the phonetics of our language.\u00a0 While English grammar is relatively simple, the pronunciation can be quite difficult for foreigners.\u00a0 A particular torment for Italians is undoubtedly the \u201cth\u201d sound.\u00a0 This sound simply does not exist in their language. \u00a0When asked to pronounce \u201cthink\u201d or \u201cthin\u201d or \u201cthick,\u201d a beginner level Italian will usually say \u201ctink,\u201d \u201cteen,\u201d and \u201cteak.\u201d<\/p>\n

Distrustful of this strange \u201cth\u201d sound, Italians \u00a0simply refuse to put their tongue between their teeth(teet), which to them sounds like someone speaking with a profound lisp or some other speech impediment.\u00a0 And so they try to work around this obstacle by changing the \u201cth\u201d into an \u201cf.\u201d\u00a0 Consequently, an intermediate Italian will often produce, \u201cfink,\u201d \u201cfeen,\u201d and \u201cfick.\u201d<\/p>\n

This leads into the next issue: acknowledging that the letter \u201ch\u201d makes any sound at all.\u00a0 When attending primary school, Italians are taught that the \u201ch\u201d is a \u201cmute little letter.\u201d\u00a0 In their schoolbooks, you\u2019ll often see an illustration of the pitiful, socially-outcast letter \u201ch\u201d with sad eyes and a bandage over her mouth to shut her up.\u00a0 In the Italian language, the \u201ch\u2019s,\u201d like good little bambini, should be seen and not heard.<\/p>\n

Indeed, there are a few (very few) Italian words that begin with an \u201ch\u201d merely to visually distinguish it from another word that would otherwise sound identical.\u00a0 For example: \u201cha<\/em>,\u201d which is a form of the verb \u201cto have,\u201d (meaning \u201che\/she has\u201d) and \u201ca,\u201d (which is the preposition \u201cto.\u201d) \u201cHa\u201d and \u201ca\u201d sound absolutely 100% the same in Italian and kids learn this during their first year of kindergarten.\u00a0 Then, after many long years of silence from the letter \u201ch,\u201d an English teacher suddenly arrives from outer space trying to explain that \u201cHi!\u201d and \u201cI\u201d are not only different words, but also sound very differently.<\/p>\n

Much confusion then ensues when \u201cAre you hungry?\u201d is misunderstood as \u201cAre you angry?\u201d At this point the student will probably begin to believe that the \u201ch\u201d does, in fact, make a sound and that it\u2019s an important part of the English language.\u00a0 As a result, they will begin putting a random \u201ch\u201d where there shouldn\u2019t be one\u2014while continuing to forget where the \u201creal\u201d ones belong for a few more years.\u00a0 Or until the teacher just gives up.<\/p>\n

<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Then there are the grammar differences. When teaching their own native language to young students, Italian schools focus much more on grammar than we do in our American system. When learning English later in life, this can be both an advantage and a disadvantage for the student, as well as for the teacher. The student will often insist on finding an appropriate equivalent for each little part of a sentence.\u00a0 This is when the English teacher might\u2014not having reviewed his or her grammar\u2014be embarrassed to find him\/herself not so well-versed in discussing direct and indirect objects, conditional forms, past participles, and so on.\u00a0 However after a short while, Italian students suddenly realize the good news: English grammar is much less complex than their own.\"\"<\/p>\n

That\u2019s not to say that they won\u2019t make plenty of grammatical errors.\u00a0 A common mistake is trying to fit English verbs into reflexive forms.\u00a0 In Italian there\u2019s a long list of reflexive verbs that in English are not used as reflexive.\u00a0 For example, the Italian \u201criposarsi,\u201d \u201csedersi,\u201d and divertirsi\u201d (\u201cto rest,\u201d \u201cto sit,\u201d and \u201cto have fun\u201d) are all reflexive.\u00a0 So it should come as no big surprise when you hear an Italian saying, \u201cI\u2019m sitting myself here, if it\u2019s ok with you, because I had myself a lot of fun dancing, and now I need to rest myself for a while.\u201d\u00a0 All the extra \u201cmyselves\u201d are the best they can come up with to translate their reflexive verbs.\u00a0 Good luck undoing this.<\/p>\n

Of course, this only touches on a wide range of linguistic differences when teaching English to Italians.\u00a0 In future posts I\u2019ll mention a few more, including the dreaded \u201cfalse friends,\u201d and idiomatic expressions.<\/p>\n

(H)and if you tink of hany of your hown anecdotes to add to de discussion, plez don\u2019t not esitate to post dem ear yourselves.<\/p>\n

(This post is partially excerpted from my E-book, which is now available on Amazon.com. \u00a0Please click the link here:\u00a0Teaching English to Italians<\/em>)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Teaching English to Italians I really love my job, teaching English to Italians.\u00a0 Not only is it enjoyable and rewarding, but I meet a lot of great people from all walks of life here in Rome.\u00a0 The pay is decent (well, halfway decent) and it\u2019s not too stressful.\u00a0 However, it\u2019s not without some challenges at […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":6842,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,5,29],"tags":[17,35,39,28,32,33,38,14,34],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/rickzullo.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/97"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/rickzullo.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/rickzullo.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rickzullo.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rickzullo.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=97"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/rickzullo.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/97\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rickzullo.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6842"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/rickzullo.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=97"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rickzullo.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=97"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rickzullo.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=97"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}