Review Details

Tutto italiano - From Italy for learners of Italian

Product Review (submitted on 2 September 2014):

Reviews – Tuttitalia, spring 2014
A ‘feel’ for the culture and insights into current events are some of the benefits that a foreign language learner can bring home from reading a magazine in the target language. If you add an aural support that would improve your listening comprehension skills, plenty of opportunities for vocabulary building, reinforcement of grammar, and, last but not least, consistency of exposure to the target language, an audio-magazine is certainly a resource that cannot be missed by language learners, teachers, and language education providers.
Tutto Italiano is a recent entry on a language resource market in Italian that is not particularly rich with audiomaterials. First published in March-April 2014, Tutto Italiano is a bi-monthly glossy audio-magazine for intermediate and advanced learners of Italian. Targeting both adult self-learners and teachers of Italian, it contains up-to-the-minute news and feature stories, covering a wide range of Italian life topics including travel, music and art, cinema, politics, sport, cuisine, popular culture and profiles of Italian personalities who have hit the news. Examples of content covered in the first two issues are a behind-the-scenes piece on the Accademia della Crusca and their role in supporting the Italian language; an article on the Sicily of Andrea Camilleri, the author of the bestselling Montalbano detective books and TV series; a feature on the Salento of the director Edoardo Winspeare’s latest film In grazia di Dio; a feature story on mozzarella di bufala, one of the most renowned Italian food exports; sections on topic specific vocabulary (Le parole) and on trends (Un po’ di numeri). This is content that accommodates a variety of interests as well as learning and teaching needs. Articles progressively vary in length, from shorter articles, in the initial sections (Le Brevi), to longer pieces, in the final and central sections, with interspersion of two-page spreads on vocabulary (Italiano visivo) and functional language sections (Il dialogo) throughout. This format is suitable for both snappy and focused reading as well as for both conversational and/or more structured lesson segments focusing on current issues.
The level of difficulty of each article is graded by reference to the levels of the Common European Framework (CEFR) and the Certificazione di Italiano come Lingua Straniera (CILS), one of the four Exam Boards recognised by the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs for testing the proficiency of Italian as a foreign language. The CEFR level is color-coded at the top of the relevant page. In each single article, the key vocabulary, which includes single words, collocations, and idiomatic expressions, is highlighted and listed in English. Selected articles are followed by graded activities of reading comprehension (open and closed questions) and vocabulary (find the definition/the opposite/the synonym, matching). The last pages of the audio-magazine contain grammar references and targeted exercises to test and reinforce some of the grammar points covered by the articles (L’angolo della grammatica). These final pages also contain the keys to the comprehension and grammar exercises ( Soluzioni degli esercizi di grammatica e comprensione).
Tutto Italiano is accompanied by an audio CD, the tracks of which cover most of the features of the audiomagazine, including the Editoriale. The tracks are read out by professional speakers – a good balance of male and female narrators – in a variety of regional accents against a base of standard spoken Italian. The pace of the reading is, indeed, graded, according to the level of the text. Tutto Italiano is not, however, short of challenges. The issue I viewed had a listening text in which the reader spoke Neapolitan. The written text was mirrored by its simplified version in A1 (CEFR) standard Italian (In un mercato… a Napoli, level C1 and C2, pp.28-29, n.2. maggio-giugno 2014): an excellent 'spunto' to explore the vernacular variety of Italian language. The CD contains, also, additional content to practice pronunciation and intonation.
Tutto Italiano is certainly welcomed, since its format is needed. And the publication has room for developing so that it can provide readers with a really thorough language resource that covers the gaps on the language resources market. Despite Tutto Italiano expressly targeting intermediate and advanced learners, it does attempt to introduce content targeting lower levels (A1-A2). In order to reach an even broader readership, it would be just a matter of increasing the number of content for beginners, displaying the already proven high-quality of the editing.
ANNA COSTANTINO
Editor, Tuttitalia
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