Adalgisa Serio, Italian Lecturer, The Manchester College

Bilingual or almost bilingual children can be a bonus in a language classroom. Their understanding and reproduction of the language is much closer to the vocabulary and the way of learning of children that we teachers, as adults, can only strive to attain.

In Italian classes, and especially in after-school clubs, it is very common to have a wide range of language ability, with some bilingual children who come from families where either both or one of the parents speak fluent Italian.

The Wilmslow Italian Club highlights this range. The group is quite heterogeneous, composed of children between five and eleven years old and language ability ranges from a full grasp of the language (virtually bilinguals) to children in their first or second year of studying Italian. In order to motivate the bilingual children, they have been actively involved in parts of the lessons by encouraging them to write their own stories, which then were used as part of the teaching material for the lower level children.

It was like this that Oscar and Zarantonia created an original story Il Signor Scorcini e Santos based on two twin brothers: the sun and a cloud. The story follows the two protagonists on a typical day: they are introduced and described, they play with different things, they play an instrument, they get hungry and cook something to eat, they get tired and go to bed without forgetting to wish the reader goodnight.

The advantages of using stories written by the children themselves are manifold. The bilingual children, who switch off easily if they feel they are not being linguistically challenged in a mixed ability class, are actively involved in the lesson. Also, the vocabulary used to create the story is not the artificially lowered language of an adult writing for children but the natural one that a child would use, making it totally realistic and didactically suitable for their age group. The sentences are short but grammatically complete, giving the learner the opportunity to learn segments of the language discourse rather than separate words. The images are appealing and meaningful as they are the fruit of the imagination of a child, where another child can easily recognise himself.

After Oscar and Zara had completed the story, it was presented to the children of the Wilmslow group, and as we know children are usually the fiercest but also the most honest judges in situations where you want a honest opinion. Well, the children loved it. They read, understood and enjoyed the story so much that they want to dramatise it now and are already asking our young writers for more! So, watch this space...