14. Conversation: Class Size

I know there is nothing more deflating than to speak (or try to speak) Italian and the damn waiter or clerk replies in English! No better way to take away our fragile confidence! Still, let’s assume we are prepared to try. In my first blog I mentioned that for those with limited knowledge of Italian an achievable goal from a short stay would be to break the inarticulate barrier and speak not fluent Italian, but halting, limping Italian -- not always grammatically correct, but still Italian! This feat is achievable if we apply ourselves to trying consciously to speak both in and out of class, and it is in classroom situations that we have to break the first barrier. So the type of class we select is most important if conversational skills is our goal.

No matter how wonderful a teacher, if the number of students is large, a person’s time to speak will be, indeed should be, highly limited. An instructor who allows one student to hog the conversation is not doing her job properly. So what is a good number? Or expressed differently, what is a small class? I can tell you from experience that 15 is too large. There were 15 in my conversation class at the University of Perugia for Foreigners. An hour divided by 15 gives 4 minutes per person, if every minute of the hour is devoted to each student speaking. At the University, we had 2 three-hour conversation classes, which means 12 minutes of allotted time per student per session. This amount is not possible, given the need for instructions and preparations, etc. The instructor’s solution was to have mini groups working on a project with the expectation that the individuals in the group would be – actually had to—speak in Italian. One person from the group would be the spokesman. This was probably the best that could be done. Frankly, I don’t think I would have broken out of my linguistic shell if the University had been my first visit to a language institution in Italy.

Fortunately, I attended the private commercial school, Scuola Leonardo da Vinci in May 2005, when the student body was still fairly small. Apparently, the number grows in the summer months, but the stated maximum is 12 per class. We had 8 students in my class, and this number allowed the instructor to hold one-on-one debates. Although we did not have conversation-only classes, each class had a portion of time for oral work. I believe this is where I started to overcome the psychological barrier of finding the right word in time. I also believe that after a month at the university my ability to speak did not improve beyond the level I had attained at Siena. So my recommendation is if you really want to speak or improve your ability to speak Italian through use of the classroom, then choose an institution that offers [very] small classes.