Apprendere una seconda lingua da analfabeti tra ricerca e didattica. Una esperienza con i minori stranieri non accompagnati a Palermo

This contribution presents data and experiences acquired within the frame of the “Inclusion Project Linguistic School of Italian Language for Foreigners” of the University of Palermo. The program, created five years ago, has designed and managed educational courses for adults and unaccompanied minors (msna) of low and very low schooling level, most of them between 16 and 18 years old, and developed a series of social initiatives related to the insertion of these minors in Sicilian Society. These youths are part of a large number of unaccompanied adolescents who, in recent years, have come ashore to the port of Palermo along with thousands of refugees and asylum seekers. A significant number of these minors “without reference adults” remain in the city. The University of Palermo has signed a memorandum of cooperation with the City Administration to insert them into Italian Language courses in order to help them acquire the language and become part of the host society. In this paper we reflect on the challenges that the profile of these new learners poses to language educators and we relate how in order to meet their needs we have created a research group dedicated specifically to investigation, teaching and training in the area of the Low Educated Second Language and Literacy Acquisition (LESLLA). We describe some profiles of learners, discuss the classroom practices that teachers have implemented and present some data about a experimental research on working memory and metalinguistic awareness.