Caleidoscopio offers a highly innovative and interactive review of Italian grammar at the intermediate level combined with a “kaleidoscope” of content, spanning diverse genres and aspects of Italian culture. The programwas conceived and developed based on three major principles: (1) successful programs in Italian and Italian Studies place a strong emphasis on culture and exposing students to contemporary and non contemporary history, art, literature, cinema, popular culture, to name a few; (2) students are most engaged in coursework that integrates the study of culture with the study of language in a rich variety of ways; (3) student-centered learning and proficiency-based practice across a variety of content areas results in achieving extraordinary communicative outcomes.
Rich in its array of reading selections, each chapter contains three carefully selected authentic readings. Authors represent different time periods (some are very young and recently published, others are well-known writers from the 20th-century “canon”) and offer a unique point of view on different socio-cultural aspects of that region’s life. Readings vary greatly in difficulty and length as well as in style and tone; they include unabridged and abridged short stories, excerpts from novels or plays, interviews, and newspaper articles. Male and female writers are equally represented.
Each of the eight chapters in Caleidoscopio explores one Italian region. Specifically, Caleidoscopio features three regions from the north (Emilia Romagna, Lombardia and Veneto), two from the center (Toscana and Lazio), and three from the south (Puglia, Sicilia and Campania). Italy’s other twelve regions are all included via the Viaggio Virtuale in the Student Activities Manual and MyItalianLab, which fosters student-centered discovery learning through a percorso scritto (writing path) and/or a percorso orale (oral presentation path). Each region is explored through the lenses of literature, history, popular culture and cinematography. Literary and film selections, unconfined by the specific reality of the region, address issues of general interest, such as class and gender relations (Goldoni’s La villeggiatura, Soldini’s Pane e tulipani), or the changing nature of friendship throughout history (Meneghello’s Le compagnie).
Systematic interconnection of culture-literature-cinema-grammar.
The five sectionswithin each chapter are interconnected: the cultural introduction (La regione) prepares students to contextualize the authentic readings (Le letture) through a guided analysis of photographs, vocabulary, and topics; the authentic readings, in turn, offer a variety of viewpoints on key socio-cultural issues already raised in the introduction. The readings also present authentic examples of the grammatical structures discussed in that chapter and/or of verb tenses already reviewed, so that il tema grammaticale and ripasso breve are not detached or isolated from course content. The film (the first of the two in Percorsi cinematografici) offers an additional window into that region’s unique identity and strategically reintegrates previously treated topics and themes. (Please note, the films are not included with the program).
Unique integration of communicative and drama-based activities for linguistic and cultural proficiency.
The programintegrates drama-based activities to develop communicative competence, to engage students in exploring and en-acting the social and cultural concepts at hand, and to practice key grammatical structures in dynamic and interactive ways.
Flexible organization is adaptable to any learning environment.
The organization within each chapter is highly flexible. Since sections are interconnected, instructors can elect whichever content suits their course goals. The authentic readings and sub-sections within La regione are relatively independent, which offer instructors many opportunities to personalize materials without compromising the overall understanding of the chapter’s theme. The program can be easily divided over two semesters or three quarters, allowing for close examination of all regions presented in the core text as well as those in the Viaggio Virtuale sections of the Student Activities Manual.
Play
