This site is intended as an archive of teaching resources for teachers of Italian, particularly at the intermediate and advanced levels. Our materials give you a template for teaching Italian songs and related materials, either as a complement to a grammatical topic or as a gateway to discussion.
Our site is still a work-in-progress, but we hope that by maintaining an up-to-date archive with a broad selection of songs from the past and present, we can provide our colleagues with tools for introducing a variety of cultural topics to discussion, of relevance to our students and the world they live in, ranging from classic musical themes like love to urgent societal issues like race and identity.
For each song in our archive, you will find:
- Tags with information on the level and discussion topics for each song
- A list of vocabulary to help your students through the text, with simple definitions in Italian or English
- One or more exercises for practicing the vocabulary
- Pre-listening questions, designed to activate schemata related to the song, and which can either be assigned as homework or used as in-class discussion
- A “Mentre ascolti” question or exercise to guide students through the text
- Comprehension questions on the text
- Discussion questions
- A link to the song on YouTube
For some songs, you will also find:
- Links to supplementary materials such as readings or videos to enhance your discussion
- Suggestions for other songs to complement your discussion
We do not own the rights to any song lyrics, but the texts of all of these songs can easily be found online, and we recommend providing them to your students (or having your students seek them out) for these activities.
The materials provided on this site are in Italian and created with an English-speaking student population in mind. They could certainly be used in other contexts, but some modifications to the glossed vocabulary, for instance, might be advisable in this case.
Site creator:
Mary Migliozzi
Assistant Teaching Professor of Italian
Villanova University
Other contributors:
Anna Love
Assistant Professor of Italian Studies
High Point University
Marianna Orsi
Italian Lecturer
University College School, London
Special thanks to Erica Hayes, Digital Scholarship Librarian and David Uspal, Library Technology Developer at Villanova University, without whose invaluable assistance this project could not have come together.