Enhancing plurilingual awareness in the Italian class: A pedagogical proposal.

The present work analyses a field trial experiment done during an intensive summer LS/L2 Italian course. It was divided into three phases. In the first one, the learners drew their linguistic biography. Then, they were asked to read a text about how a non-native Italian author describes her approach to the Italian language, and then, similarly, narrate their own encounter with the Italian language and what had happened for them. Finally, students composed a multilingual poem. This approach uses art-based techniques in order to expand the expressive means of the learners by fostering awareness of their linguistic knowledge. These activities were intentionally conceived to be diverse and multimodal to support and promote the centrality of a student while stimulating the use of language in a cognitive reflexive way.