Lewis’ lexical approach in teaching Italian as a second\foreign language: from theorical suggestions to practical contexts.

Since Italian has evolved into a widely spoken language, the ways of teaching it have been seriously affected by the different and increasingly specific requests coming from learners. For a long time, the most popular trend of teaching Italian was what can be defined a cultural perspective (due to the literary, historical and artistic impact of this language through the centuries and worldwide); nowadays new typologies of learners have appeared, due mainly to the massive incoming immigration Italy has experienced since the ‘90s; but also because of the new awareness about the concrete chance, for Italian language, to be usefully taught and learnt worldwide not only as a cultural mirror, but also as a mean of communication among people. In this renewed learning and teaching context, the lexical perspective has reshaped into a useful and well-appreciated mean of approaching to Italian in a more concrete and effective way (and no more only with a literary perspective). With such premises, this paper aims to narrate some ‘shots’ of using lexical approach in university classes of Italian as a second\foreign language; and thus to show the communicative awareness students can gain, with particular reference to the “efficaciousness” of learning and speaking Italian surpassing the traditional paths of grammar rules and literary texts to focus on structures, such as chunks, occurrences and idioms, which enhance a real communicative competence.