L'esperienza migratoria degli alunni stranieri e le loro scelte linguistiche

The research aims at tracing the individual variables which could mostly influence high school migrant students’ willingness to put the accuracy of their output at risk, as to structure concepts in a more complex and ambitious form (cfr. Skehan, 1996; 1998). By way of statistical analysis and qualitative data, two groups of Italian L2 learners are traced. Some opt for a safety-first approach, avoiding the use of the whole range of cohesive devices they have explicit knowledge of; others show a greater tendency to an accuracy-last approach (Skehan, 1998). The latter show to be better integrated in the Italian social context, more motivated to learn Italian, continue to study their mother language, know more than one idiom apart from L1 and English.