L'apprendimento della lingua italiana nell'interazione con bambini migranti nella scuola dell'infanzia

This paper deals with a study carried out in infant schools where migrant children, learning to speak Italian, interact with their teachers and mates. Here, I discuss two videotaped and transcribed interactions involving two different children. The approach I use for my analysis is based on a combination between analysis of educational conversations and analysis of social structures of educational interactions. I focus on the interplay between the promotion of migrant children’s active participation and their use of the second language and I look at the consequences such promotional approach has on their learning of Italian. In particular, I highlight the ways in which children are encouraged to show their epistemic status and authority in second language interactions and how this encourages them to participate in the interaction. Particular turn designs are in fact used by teachers to support the migrant children’s participation in Italian in talk which includes other children’s supportive or competitive actions. The analysis shows that the organization of these teacher-children sequences has quite specific features which distinguish them from the more traditional evaluative organisations most commonly found in school interaction