Insegnare e apprendere la lingua seconda nel contesto migratorio. Il caso dell’Italia

Italy is traditionally marked by phenomena of bilingualism, and multilingualism. The attention on those aspects has been growing in the last thirty years, since the increase in the presence of children of immigrants in schools has revealed their specific needs, including those related to learn Italian. This paper gives a synthetic overview of the main outcome of linguistics studies, focusing on the general coordinates the topic of teaching and learning Italian, as a Second language, is placed whithin. The paper focuses on some crucial issues around which intercultural pragmatics develop – including interlingua, transfer, and the gap between First and Second language, and psychosocial factors –, which affect Second language acquisition. Our aim is therefore to show how the topic of learning the language of the host country is connected not only to strictly linguistic, but also biographical, factors.