LA FORMAZIONE DOCENTE DI ITALIANO L2 IN CONTESTO MIGRATORIO: UN SISTEMA INTEGRATO PER LO SVILUPPO DI MATERIALE DIDATTICO CORPUS-INFORMED SULLA LINGUA PER IL LAVORO

Beyond the almost exclusive media attention given to so-called irregular landings, immigration in Italy is statistically a structural phenomenon, where the more than 5 million legally resident foreigners mostly come from European countries that are not classified as poor according to UN development indices. The emergency approach of the first reception system must therefore be complemented by a permanent system to facilitate linguistic and socio-professional integration. Mastery of the language of the host country plays a key role in a migrant's entry into the world of work. They may also encounter difficulties at other stages of their working lives: in keeping their jobs, in maintaining their own and their colleagues' security, and in progressing in their careers. Foreign workers continue to be disadvantaged in terms of the employment rate and remain "trapped" in low-skilled jobs, despite the fact that the average age of foreigners in Italy is 35.7 years of full working age. In this context, the vulnerable and not yet linguistically autonomous adult migrants cannot afford to control the language before supporting their basic needs. The lack of employment can have serious repercussions both on his socio-economic status and on the quality of the fabric of the entire host community. Therefore, vocational integration should often take priority over more general social integration. For this purpose, the ECML (European Centre for Modern Languages) of the Council of Europe promotes the Language for Work approach, which aims to promote the acquisition of L2 in a professional context: an educational trend already validated in many parts of Europe, but not sufficiently reflected in our territory, which continues to experiment with isolated and temporary training initiatives. In Italy, the public L2 courses offered by the CPIAs (Centri Provinciali per l'Istruzione degli Adulti) tend to focus on general language; the vocational courses available often require a level of linguistic autonomy of at least B1, which is usually beyond the reach of migrants. The research also shows that there is a lack of a variety of training tools focusing on language for work, which are targeted at migrants and do not require basic linguistic-professional knowledge. To overcome these barriers, we decided to create a fully integrated IT environment to enable L2 teachers to independently design the professional development courses they need to respond to the structural shortage. The research project stems from FAMI-2514 – La lingua italiana per l’integrazione e per il lavoro. Percorsi linguistici di apprendimento dell’italiano L2 nella Regione Marche1, in which the University of Macerata was a partner, identifying the catering sector for strategic vocational training in the area. A method for the creation of shared professional knowledge is presented which, using a series of synergised computer environments in accordance with the principles of the NGDLE (Next Generation Distributed Learning Ecosystem) framework, has enabled two samples of L2 teachers to generate multimedia didactic content useful for teaching Italian for catering at A2 level: a linguistically disadvantaged but very broad profile for which there is a limited number of vocational training proposals. The place of implementation of the project is identified in the CPIAs: the only public training institution that is spread over the whole territory and that is free of charge for the migrants. The integrated system consists of three tools designed in a connectivist way: the ITAL2RISTO Moodle: which supports the collaborative development of learning content within this framework. It is the development objective of the creation method, as it is useful for future training. The interface consists of a selection of the glottodidactic objectives of the Italavoro syllabus at A2 level, obtained from interviews conducted in the catering world; the specialised RISTO corpus: created for this purpose according to specific criteria. It makes it possible to observe linguistic productions in a specialised context, compensating for the L2 teacher's natural lack of technical knowledge in the field, thus allowing the creation of corpus-based, data-intensive materials; the Material Collection: a database of the domain that serves as an organised repository of multimedia materials. A system of recurring nomenclature in the Moodle, the Collection and the sub-corpora of RISTO encourages the targeted development of resources and the growth of the system's environments in an almost spontaneous way. At the end of the creation process, the teacher adapts the linguistic information of the resources to the predetermined A2 level. The teaching content is created in accordance with the glottodidactic objectives of this virtual syllabus and is prepared for training by the platform itself, which in its maximum development can take the form of a self-contained digital textbook. The technology supports the processes and, in line with the DigCompEdu guidelines, enhances the results of the teacher's work; it promotes future training through the numerous learning benefits of using educational technology, while at the same time providing a simulation context closer to working reality, useful for professional training. The collaborative approach supports the network of diverse skills on which the design is based, thus favouring product quality and development time. The selection of sources is also placed at the basis of the creative process, in order to place a filter that separates the design ecosystem created by the information overload of the Internet, in favour of its reliability. In the conducted trials, the various stages of creation of the method are traced with teachers to create some specialised multimedia teaching resources. The data collected is analysed using a mixed 'convergent' method, analysing quantitative and qualitative data separately and combining results to answer research hypotheses. The results of the study are presented in the form of a set of findings, which have implications for the future inclusion of language for work courses in CPIA, also through the proposed platform, which appears to be flexible enough to be implemented within the existing organisational structure of the institution. Regarding the necessary teacher training in this respect, teachers are inclined to re-implement the proven design method and seem able to extend their functions and skills to generally unusual design methods. They appear capable of constructing the necessary specialised content through the use of corpora, which they would incorporate into their professional practice, also through targeted training. The creation method, the ITAL2RISTO Moodle, the RISTO corpus and material Collection, validated through various experiments, can hope to find a more stable form in the near future, also as specific training carried out in educational institutions. The developed design ecosystem seems to be replicable for other employment domains, thus significantly opening up the boundaries of the given project. In addition to migrants in a vulnerable situation, other users could benefit from the proposed platform, which, together with the creation method dedicated to it, has the vocation of constituting itself as a structural and permanent response in the system of facilitating the integration of adult migrants. This will bring us closer to achieving a desired 'language-culture-economy-social' nexus.