Abstract:

The experience of the COVID-19 pandemic has placed pedagogy at the center of the current debate in linguistic research. During the emergency we have learned to implement immediate action plans to protect the health of students and academic staff and to exploit Information and Communication Technologies to guarantee the right to study. But there is still an information gap on the impact this change has had on learning and teaching. In this scenario emerges the need for a profound reflection on the role that teachers and students can assume in the realization of a powerful and ecological learning environment for the post-covid era. This article aims to present the experience of the University for Foreigners of Perugia: the theoretical matrices underlying the choice of the training model adopted will be illustrated and the results of questionnaires and interviews of students and teachers of Italian as a second language will be described. The results show that although there is still a lot of work to be done, the distributed classroom is currently the learning environment best suited to social changes, students needs and the carrying out of communities of practice.

Keywords:

COVID-19 pandemic, foreign languages, communities of practice.