ITALIAN STUDENTS AND FOREIGN LANGUAGES: this relationship is not always simple 🙁

It is a fact that, unlike many northern European countries, Italians do not know foreign languages well ​​(not even English!). For this reason many families choose a school for their children which offers more English from a young age, such as LITTLE ENGLAND BILINGUAL SCHOOL.

Little England is the ONLY BILINGUAL STATE EQUIVALENT SCHOOL IN THE BRESCIA PROVINCE.

But what does BILINGUAL SCHOOL mean?

The educational project of LITTLE ENGLAND BILINGUAL SCHOOL has been consolidated over the last ten years to respond to the requests of Brescia’s families who desire a deeper knowledge of English for their children. Little England is a state equivalent school that follows the Italian ministerial program. This means that our students, unlike those from international schools or unrecognized private schools, do not need to take “private” exams if they should desire to return to the Italian public school system. Our school is bilingual because English is much more present than in public schools or in other Brescia-based state equivalent schools. But how much is “more present?”

Some schools call themselves ‘bilingual’ but then offer only 4 hours a week more of English than a public school. In this case, if anything, the term “reinforced English” would be more correct. In short, 4 hours a week of more English is not enough to define a school as “bilingual”. At Little England, on the other hand, the preschool and nursery school children are exposed to 100% of their school hours in the English language as the native English speaker is always in co-presence with the Italian teacher. At our primary school they spend 14 hours studying in English, thus devoting almost the same number of lessons held in English to subjects taught in Italian. In addition, we would like to point out that the whole lesson takes place in English and is not translated. In our bilingual model, the two languages ​​are used in the teaching of multiple school subjects. This approach not only favors and develops the ability to learn two languages, but also the expansion of one’s mental horizons and appreciation for other cultures. Our teaching model of the language lessons is the “immersion” one. In other words, the teachers do not translate from one language to another but act as if they were in an English school, expressing themselves directly in their language and using the typical teaching style of their culture and training.