Italian Teaching and intercultural education in Slovenia

Abstract

The article presents an overview of the main characteristics concerning the teaching/learning of Italian in Slovenia and a reflection on the importance of intercultural education as a social inclusion tool for the individual. After a brief illustra tion of the Slovenian legal framework related to the protection of minority languages, the paper presents the education process and the characteristics of the teaching/learning of the Italian language as mother tongue (L1), as Second Language (L2) in the bilingual territory and as Foreign Language (FL) in the rest of Slovenia. In particular, the study focuses on the peculiarities of the bilingual education model of the Slovenian Istria, a border territory and contact area of predominantly Romance and Slavic cultures. Finally, the article emphasizes the need to apply an intercultural approach to teaching since proper functioning of contemporary multicultural society depends on the awareness of one‘s own culture, together with the existence of other Cultures of the environment. In this way both teachers and students will be aware of the constant need to increase their linguistic and intercultural competences.