New Horizons

I would like to introduce the present section with the list of some key words that sum up the areas of experience and reflection I was able to improve thanks to the input I received along those years.
Even if it is of course inclusive of the whole range of stimula I acquired from all my tutors, I think it was mainly due to the tutors i met during my five-week training at Norwich University and the personal interaction I had the opportunity to share with the teachers there.


  • cooperative learning
  • workshops
  • language awareness
  • "language is what it is, because it does what it does"
  • teacher as a listener
  • linar versus non linear thinking


With the passing of time I gradually became more self conscious what I had been doing in previous years and felt the necessity of a refreshing and eto find new stimula that could somehow respond to a new necessity I was feeling: the idea that school was showing significant distance from the real world outside that was in constant trans-formation while school contexts and organization seem rather static. The occasion came soon whem i was given the opportunity to go and be member of a School Commission for the Final Exam in an Italian Liceo Scientifico in New York.

The experience offered the chance to compare the narrow horizon of the little town school I was working in and the complexity of the New York school which mirrored the peculiarities of a large metropolitan world where the population of students was already overtly showing the features of a multicultured society where plurilingualism and mixed ability classes were the norm.

In addition, the training received at Aberdeen and Norwich universities where I was awrded scholarships both concerned with Literature and language studies nurtewred my need to study something new to be experimented and tested with my students.

The American experience together with the contexts of the British universities seemed to offer me the opportunity to conjugate my previous in service training with my interest in literature and its linguistic ingridients.

I will never forget the wealth that was handed over to me by my Scottish tutors, espaecially as it concerns the close study of literary texts and in particular Seamus Heaney's poetry and David Lodge's Nice Work.

In addition to all this came the tutors at Norwich: Mr. Alan Pulverness who was able to communicate and teach us students the suitable skills to deal and manage with literary texts and in my persoanl case tosupport me in re-shaping my syllabus design into a project work-based one that would result in a more attractive form of learning ande studying where any single student could bring in specific personal competences and, after adequate negotiation, the construction of knowledge should result of a sharing process and participation.

What's more as far as language is concerned, Mr. Martin Dodman was really great in fostering reflection on the complex aspects of textuality, language awarenessand action research on verb aspects, all areas of research and reflection without which my future work and innovative experiments could not have taken place.

I must recognize thatup to now, never did I receive input that might somehow be compared to the stimula Norwich was able to provide, in spite of the many courses and training I was able to get.