Hi!
My name is Simona.
My mother tongue is italian. I was born in Brescia, a fascinating city near the Garda Lake and near Milan. I live in Brescia and also in Milan, so I can enjoy the natural beauty of Garda Lake ( food, wine, peaceful) and I can enjoy the culture and life in Milan (theaters, culture, fashion, intercultural relationships).
I’m a teacher of Italian language and literature and I have specialized in teaching Italian as a foreign language and as a second language. I have a 12 years experience. I work with children, with teenagers and with adults. In May 2012, I attended the course to became tutor in the CILS (Certificate of Italian as a Foreign Language) examination at the University of Siena, and in December 2012, I will do an examination to obtain the qualification DITALS II (advanced expertise in teaching Italian to foreign students).
On skype or face to face, I give Italian lessons to foreign students, to business people and to people wanting to learn the Italian language for tourism, for passion or cultural interest.
In Italy, I lead Italian courses for adult immigrants and I teach Italian to immigrant children at public school.
I help and support Italian students with learning difficulties, particularly in the area of language learning.
I coordinate and manage training programs for teachers in the following disciplines: language teaching, interlanguage, methodologies to teach and learn foreign languages and second languages, intercultural pedagogy.
I started working at a high school in Brescia, teaching Italian language and literature and, in the same time, I started teaching italian as L2, because I've always been fascinated by multilingualism and multiculturalism. My students came from six, seven or more different countries, they spoke five or six different languages (English, Urdu, Spanish, Albanian, Wolof, Serbian and so on).
Since then, I have become more and more fascinated by the cultural and linguistic diversity and I started to study how people acquire a second language in infancy, in early childhood and in adulthood, touching on the stages of bilingual and second language learning, the psychological, sociocultural and linguistic factors influencing second language learning, individual differences and the social and cognitive consequences of bilingualism.
For many years, I have dealt with the integration of immigrant children in Italian schools, and I studied a lot about intercultural pedagogy. I also specialized in intercultural education...
To find out more about me and my work, you can download the pdf in Italian or English.