Online creative tasks to enhance the intercultural value of a multilingual group of students of Italian L2

Learning a language on the PC seems sometimes to be in a dichotonomus relation with the main principles of the communicative approaches in foreign language learning. Puren observes that “L’approche communicative avait été ainsi nommée parce que l’objectif social de référence de cette méthodologie était de former les apprenants à communiquer en langue étrangère (L2)” (2009 : 155). The ongoing spread and development of ICT applications designed according to the social learning theories should guarantee, almost in theory, that linguistically and culturally distant people can easily get in touch and interact without any practical obstacles. This is proved by the rapid appearence of social network platforms such as LiveMocha and Busuu conceived as new learning environments for language learning through interaction and socialization, mainly among peer contributions. Therefore, if they easily bring students into contact, they don’t seem to have solved the problem of high-quality training on productive and interactive abilities in self-learning. Oral and written production and interaction are still, despite the efforts, the most difficult abilities to train within the frame of foreign language self-learning. In this contribution we intend to describe the creative strategies embraced by the tutor to try to transform the strong linguistic and socio-cultural differences of foreign students of Italian into an advantage and a richness for the entire group. In a blended model that is strongly unbalanced on the “distance” dimension, we have tried to transform the online and the lab activities into an experimental background where the teaching, linguistic and technological dimensions are profitably synergized. Indeed, if language learning resources seem to be more effective when they are specifically designed and targeted to a linguistically and culturally homogeneous group of students, on the other, the increasing multicultural and plurilingual society is more and more evidently the real context where students live and interact outside the classroom. It is a challenge to manage but it could also be profitable to understand and a mirror of the real society.