Good day,

we could say so much about speaking English as Italians. 

If you acquire English as a second language, or third or whatever, it is one more identity you can add to your one/s. 

It allows your potentialities to surface, since so many other skills of yours were submerged and a second language is just the tool, sometimes it is just the excuse, to make you observe more, pay grater attention, listen more carefully, write to find out that there are accuracy and style, that can be transferred to your other languages; in case you are Italian, your mother tongue too can improve.

Speaking too, giving any single word an intonation to accompany any speech of yours, becomes that enjoyment the way anything related to English is. It is that one more house you can have and offer to everybody, feeling at home wherever you can hear it spoken.

Something in common, this feeling equal, and making the others feeling the same. 

Up to you to continue what English is for you, your past and present experiences, to let our readers know. 

It would be a pleasure reading them. 

Comparing experiences, what is one of the best things Mike Strevens has ever done? Why? And yours? Why? 

He speaks about Italian teachers of English. What does he say about them and what is your general evaluation about English spoken in Italy? 

Where did you learn English? How long have you been studying it? 

What do you do to improve it? Does it work? How do you evaluate that? 

We think that Mike Strevens says something quite true about the common Italians' behaviour when speaking English. Integrating school classes' programs, we see that students tend to be afraid or ashamed to be laughed at, and be seen objects of derision by the others. 

We are convinced that the approach to a second language at school should consider it behaviour, not a subject. A language is a matter of life, a lifelong competence, a vehicle for any meaning you want to communicate and talk about. With the teacher acting in English, it should be perceveid as such.  A language is you and your entire body, the way you feel at ease with it.  

Read the article, think of it, write a comment for us to read and talk about when back in class. 

Thanks everybody, enjoy your English

Anna - Coordinator 

Source: Speak Up, March 2014