Learning the Italian Language and Culture

My literacy narrative is when I first learned how to read, write, and speak Italian. I started taking Italian my Freshmen year of high school, and my last year taking Italian was my junior year. I wanted to take Italian because I’m Italian, and I wanted to speak it just in case I go to Italy. Freshmen year, speaking and just learning Italian was pretty hard. Sophomore year, it started to get easier to understand. Then, Junior year came and I could almost speak Italian fluently. It wasn’t the greatest Italian but it was still pretty good. I can remember that my teacher would have us do fun activities to remember words and how they sounded. It was pretty hard to learn Italian, but my teacher was from Sicily so she made it easier for us to learn. We also watched a lot of movies and videos that were in Italian or had something to do with Italy, and that would also help us learn Italian. Even though it was really hard to learn, I really liked Italian and it was a very fun class.
One video that we watched that helped us learn and I really liked was a Mr. Bean clip. We were learning about toiletries and things in a bedroom, so my teacher had us watch this funny video of Mr. Bean getting ready for work after he woke up. He woke up late in the video and he was in a hurry to get to work. He shaved and his razor died while he was shaving, so it got stuck to his face. He got dressed in his car while he was driving and he brushed his teeth while he was driving as well. After we watched this video, my teacher had us say all the things in our vocab that we saw in the video; and then we would say them in Italian. This was a really fun and helpful way of learning and memorizing words in Italian for me. This video was helpful for me because it was the first step into an activity we did where we had to write down all the things he was doing that were similar to our vocab. Then we had an activity where we would all have to say what we saw in the video; and then we would say the words and actions in Italian. This was a very helpful way of learning how to pronounce those words in Italian. It also helped with memorizing those words as well. We learned words like, getting up, getting out of bed, toothbrush, razor, shave, shower, toilet, etc.
My Italian teacher, Miss Risita, was my first Italian teacher for the three years I took Italian. She was from Sicily and this made it easier to learn because she knew more than someone who wasn’t from Italy. I really liked Miss Risita as my teacher; she was a very fun and energetic teacher and this made class exciting and fun. Halfway through my sophomore year, Miss Risita left to go teach at another school. The class was very sad; Miss Risita even started crying. Our new teacher was Mrs. Dichicco; she was much older and less outgoing than Miss Risita. She was also from Italy so it was still easier to learn Italian. I didn’t have as much fun in Italian with Mrs. Dichicco; she was kind of boring and she was pretty mean. We never did the fun activities we did with Miss Risita, and we always had these boring worksheets to do and we could never do group activities. Italian was definitely not as fun with her as our teacher. Early in my junior year, Mrs. Dichicco had to leave for a personal matter and Miss Risita came back. The class was so happy and excited. She said she missed us and it wasn’t the same at the other school she taught at. She also got married so she became known as Mrs. Terese. Also, the other classmates were involved because we used to do a lot of group work and activities.
One activity we would do as a group in class was the memory game. We were given a minute to memorize each vocab word in a chapter. After we memorized the words for a minute, we would close our books and stand up. Everyone would be up and we would go in order and say a word in Italian that we remembered. If we didn’t get the word in five seconds, we would be out and we had to sit down. We would also get out if we repeated a word that someone had said already, or we just said a word that was completely wrong. This was also a very fun way of helping me and the class learn and memorize the words. My Freshmen year, I was just terrible at this game. I could barely win or just get in the top five standing. Sophomore year, I started to pick it up a little bit, and I started memorizing more words. I even won a couple of times. My Junior year, I got really good at memorizing words, and I would win the game almost every time we played. If I did not win, I would be in the top five left. This activity was very significant to me because it showed my growth in learning Italian each year, and it showed how I had gotten better in speaking and learning all the Italian words we had learned.
Taking Italian for these three years was important because it expanded my knowledge of another language and culture and made me smarter. It was also important because my dad’s side of the family is Italian so now we could relate more, and I could speak to my great aunts and uncles and my grandparents in Italian. Now I am able to go to another country and speak their language and understand it.