Cyberspace and Non-Avatars:Teaching Italian as Second Language in the Age of Covid-19. The case of WeChat

This paper highlights the effects that the COVID-19 pandemic has had on teaching Italian as a second language. In the lockdown age which limits travel, foreign students wishing to learn Italian no longer have neither the environment nor the context in which to study a language. The lack of an immersion component has eliminated the classic distinction between learning a second language and a foreign language by making them virtually identical. Technology, via use of online platforms and the internet, has helped to avoid the total elimination of a learning environment by allowing students to continue to have a linguistic setting, passing from a physical location to a virtual location (virtual/real rooms) in which the native Italian teacher becomes the perfect interface for studying Italian as a second language. In particular, we will analyse the use of WeChat in a sample of Chinese students.