La glottodidattica umanistica in Italia: una prospettiva storica

‘Humanistic Language Teaching’ is still used today in essays and books, mostly referring to a methodology which focuses on the learner and above all on his emotions as relevant factors in acquisition. As a matter of fact, HLT is something more and it concerns the very idea of learning, of interpersonal relations, of verbal and non-verbal languages, and so on. In this essay the author describes the scientific context of the ’60s, the decade when an impressive number of books were published that changed the history of teaching and in particular of language teaching. Then, the main 6 elements of HLT are described, with reference to their definition in the ’70s and ’80s. The rationale of the essay is not just historical survey, but rather the need to focus attention on the whole paradigm of HLT, not only on the affective dimension.