Oral interaction in the teaching of the Serbian and Croatian languages as FL to Italian speakers

Since the 1980s, the communicative approaches in language teaching have shown the importance of interaction, particularly if the guided learning process takes place outside of the authentic context. In this case, the teacher’s work becomes particularly important, since the teacher’s oral input is often the only one to which the learner is exposed. The studies in this field (Ciliberti 2003; Orletti 2000; Titone 1988) have specified the divergence that exists between natural speech used on a daily basis in an authentic environment, and the discourse used in language classroom. We will start from this statement to verify how true it is in our field of work and to consider the reasons and the need for this teaching practice. This paper will examine student-student and student-teacher interaction in a Serbian and Croatian language class for Master’s students at the Department of Foreign Languages and Literatures and Modern Cultures at the University of Turin. The study will involve the transcription of audio recordings of the lessons, which were held during the academic year 2015-2016. It will observe the method used by the teacher in order to be understood, for example with verbal intervention, alternating teacher talk with foreigner talk (Diadori, 2004), or by using the students’ native language. It will also take into consideration the oral production and the interaction between learners, focusing on the strategies brought into play to communicate. Finally, it will endeavour to find some answers concerning the most suitable methods for motivating and involving students (discussion topics, error correction strategies, etc.) which might help in the development of interactive abilities within conversation classes at intermediate/advanced levels.