Le fiabe di Roberto Piumini insegnano a parlare italiano
Roberto Piumini’s Fables as ITALIAN LESSONS

Summary/Abstract: Our research intends to find selection parameters for children’s literature to be used asa fundamental part of a foreign-language curriculum. We achieve this through an analysis of theeducational and cultural-linguistic advantages of this literature. Our project’s goal is to expose ourstudents to Italian literature using their second language, rather than their first one, as a way toconvey cultural meaning. This educational project was conducted in 2015, in a school in Chicagothat offers classes of Italian Language and Culture to children at various linguistic levels, includingthe English-Italian bilingual one. Our research paper is divided into three parts. The first partintroduces a theoretical excursus on the meaning of children’s literature and on the fable’s structureas a literary genre. The second part presents examples of how a specific text (L’albero delle fiabe byRoberto Piumini) was selected and used during the project; this part also includes our comments basedon the observations of the child participants. Finally, the analysis stage describes the generalisationof our data within a framework indicating how to select a literary text, which may be useful for otherteachers when deciding which children’s books to use and how to apply them to educational curricula.

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