Case Studies

The information for the Case Study was collected during an interview with Sabrina Civiero, teacher at the “Ospedale Infantile Regina Margherita” of Turin, Italy. Sabrina Civiero represents the promoting institution of the “Parlando s’impara” project.

The background of the “Parlando s’impara” project is represented by the specific needs of a target group composed by foreign teenaged patients of the Oncology ward of the “Ospedale Infantile Regina Margherita” of Turin. These young people do not speak Italian and spend months in hospital before returning home. Generally they cannot attend school in Italy because of their ill state of health. The same communicative barriers concern their parents. The “Parlando s’impara” has been written and realised in order to face to those barriers.

The project target groups are the foreign teenaged patients of the Oncology ward of the “Ospedale Infantile Regina Margherita” of Turin and their parents.

The project target languages are English, Albanian, Romanian, Arabian, Russian and Italian L2.

The “Parlando s’impara” project aims to give voice to those people who risk not to be heard for months, living a period of physical and psychological isolation. Learning Italian as L2 becomes a mayor objective in order to start a basic communication with the doctors, the nurses, the teachers and the volunteers. The objective of the project is the creation of an e-book which can be a resource for hospital teachers: it aims to offer the basic vocabulary to the young patients, giving them the possibility to communicate in simple situations inside and outside the hospital.

The “Parlando s’impara” approach can be explained according to the specificity of teaching in hospitals: face-to-face lessons and recurrent communicative situations. The project is the result of different steps: the detection of the problem, the production and the translation of the learning brochure, the check about the validity of the learning material, the creation of the first e-book, the upload of the e-book on the school web site where it can downloaded by users.

The “Parlando s’impara” project allowed the foreign teenaged patients to: start a basic communication in Italian language, develop their linguistic skills, speak to doctors and nurses, ask for general information, make questions about and comprehend their health situation, express specific needs, know something more about Turin and Italy. Thanks to the vocabulary offered by the “Parlando s’impara” project, patients may autonomously move inside and outside the hospital. The main result, however, is in terms of psychological development of their condition.

Sabrina Civiero decided to submit the application for the European Language Label because it intended to share its good practice.

When a European project offers psychological benefices, in addition to linguistic skills, it is necessary to share it in order to guarantee its sustainability and to increase the number of benefited addresses. That’s what happened with the “Parlando s’impara” initiative after the award of the Label.

The “Parlando s’impara” had already a practical application before receiving the European Language Label. This official recognition was disseminated through the Label logo which made its appearance on the project and the promoting institution homepage. It acted as an additional guarantee of quality.

The real benefits offered by the Label to the “Parlando s’impara” project concern the target groups of the initiative. The Label underlined in a positive way the actions carried out by the project promoter and offered a greater visibility to a good practice which deserved to be better known and shared at European level.

In order to develop a quality project in the field of Language learning, Sabrina Civiero and the other teachers advice to organize the project starting from a strong idea, which can bring positive benefices to its target group, and to insert it in a real contest.

According to the project promoter, a winning initiative should be disseminated using all the possible communication technologies and all the possible channels offered by internet.

The NELLIP Network selected the “Parlando s’impara” project for its consistency with the political priorities of the European Commission in the field of language learning. In particular, the “Parlando s’impara” promotes the multilingualism in a complex reality where the lack of linguistic skills carries the risk of a social exclusion and isolation.