Dalla grammatica alla riflessione sulla lingua nell’insegnamento dell’italiano LS/L2

The central question in teaching Italian as both a mother and as a foreign/L2 language is on what should be the role of grammar within a wider linguistic debate. Grammar has not always been linked to the linguistic debate either in teaching of Italian as a mother tongue language, in which a more grammatical way of teaching prevails, or in teaching Italian as FL/L2, in which the emphasis deals instead with the central role of communicative functions over structures. The goal of the article is to highlight what are the didactic potentials that might emerge from a linguistic education based on the development of both metalinguistic and metacommunicative reflections and also for learners from a L1 typologically which is very distant from Italian, such as Chinese speaking students. To reach this goal, the first part will briefly trace the evolution of the teaching of grammar in Italian as L1 while the second part will present approaches and methods that enhances a description of the system of Italian as a target language.