Volume 3, Issue 1, December 2006
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Item[BOOK REVIEW] Aldo S. Bernardo & Anthony L. Pellegrini (2006). Companion to Dante’s Divine Comedy: A Comprehensive Guide for the Student and General Reader, Revised Edition.(Department of Languages, Flinders University, 2006-12)This revised edition, at a distance of 38 years since its appearance as A Critical Study Guide to Dante’s Divine Comedy (a volume long out of print), offers useful study aids, including schematic charts, visual representations of the topography of the Comedy, biographical highlights and comparative chronological data. Composed in an accessible, unadorned style, Bernardo’s and Pellegrini’s companion study guide has appeal for English-speaking readers such as undergraduates, members of Dante reading or study groups and general readers of the poem.
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Item[BOOK REVIEW] Marie Emmitt, Linda Komesaroff and John Pollock (2006). Language and Learning: An Introduction for Teaching.(Department of Languages, Flinders University, 2006-12)This book [Language and Learning: An Introduction for Teaching. 4th ed.]provides a foundation for understanding language in the classroom. It clearly appeals to a well-defined audience of language educators who are practising teachers of English or of another language, in any context, or involved in pre-service teacher education. It claims to “support teachers in expanding their knowledge about language and the implications for teaching” (p. x), and to oblige them to reflect upon and evaluate their practices. The authors are very explicit about enhancing their targeted readers’ “understanding of the nature and function of language and language learning in order to assist [their] decision-making in the classroom”, but, as they are quick to remark, “[t]his is not a ‘how to’ book” (p. xi).
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ItemForeign Language students’ perceptions of a reflective approach to text correction( 2006-12)This paper presents a teaching model developed to encourage second-year university students of Italian to reflect upon their writing process and to consider error correction as an active source of learning. While composing their own autobiography, students were encouraged to draw on teacher indirect feedback in order to self-correct errors, to incorporate this feedback in the redrafting of text, and to reflect on their use of linguistic forms. It is argued that this combination of teaching strategies – which forms the model explored in this paper – plays a crucial role in assisting students to take responsibility for their own learning. To develop this argument, this paper firstly outlines the academic background and the teaching context from which the model was developed. Secondly, it describes the key components of the model and their application in a second-year Italian course at Griffith University. In particular, it explores a reflective approach to text correction, which combines direct and indirect feedback and aims to foster independence from teacher intervention and reflection on learning strategies. Thirdly, it analyses student perceptions of this model in order to clarify its educational value in a foreign language (FL) learning context. It concludes by identifying pedagogical implications for future applications
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ItemComedy and Humour, Stereotypes and the Italian Migrant in Mangiamele’s Ninety Nine Per Cent(Department of Languages, Flinders University, 2006-12)Giorgio Mangiamele is regarded as the most significant first generation Italo-Australian filmmaker of the post-war period. Yet, in spite of his “pioneering efforts” and his attempts to be accepted into Australian mainstream cinema by adopting English dialogue and Australian characters in many of his films, he remained to an extent marginalised as an “ethnic” filmmaker, achieving recognition and some government financial support only towards the end of his life. In this study, I will explore an avenue of criticism suggested, in particular, by film critic Quentin Turnour (2001). Giorgio Mangiamele, the critic argues, “needs to be remembered […] as maybe one of our first art filmmakers”. The focus of the study will be Ninety Nine Per Cent, Mangiamele’s only film regarded as comic and the only one that was acquired by ABC Television, and supposedly screened only once (never screened in Victoria). A reading of the filmic text reveals one of the reasons for the lack of success and moderate acceptance: behind its comic veneer the film is quite sad and gloomy. It will be argued that Giorgio Mangiamele has sought to express his feelings and the social and historical conditions of his time using a combination of stereotypical imagery and the uniquely Italian (Sicilian) kind of humour theorised by philosopher and playwright Luigi Pirandello in his essay “L’umorismo”.
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Item"Unrecorded lives": oral narratives of a group of first-generation Campanian women residing in Adelaide, South Australia(Department of Languages, Flinders University, 2006-12)This study examines issues of identity and cultural maintenance, as evidenced by the oral testimonies of a generational cohort who were born in the region of Campania in Southern Italy and who emigrated to Australia in the 1950s-1960s. During the post-war period of mass migration by Italians to overseas destinations, an Assisted Migration Agreement was signed by Australia and Italy (in 1951); however, the majority of Campanian migrants to Adelaide were not the beneficiaries of assisted passages. Rather, sponsorship by spouses, relatives or paesani, followed by cluster settlement patterns, were strong features of transnational immigration by Campanians to South Australia in the post-WWII period. As a result, the journeying and resettlement experiences of this project’s sampling of first generation Campanian women were predominantly influenced by family kinship networks operating within a system of chain migration. The paper will consider the ways in which the project informants developed mechanisms in order to survive the difficulties of cultural displacement and marginalisation from mainstream culture. The participants’ “outsider” point of view provides valuable information on the significance of cultural dislocation as a feature of South Australian society in the last fifty years.
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