The dissertation studies the fairytale and its role in in the second educational period of elementary schools Italian classes. Firstly, the fairytale is introduced as a literary genre with history of its research and theoretical approaches that were formed in the process. This in followed by a chapter about the fairytale as a literary genre that is meant for children and about its influence on different areas of the child`s development follows. All these findings have influenced the interest in the use of fairytale in the area of teaching foreign languages. There are many reasons for its use in foreign language: fairytales motivate, encourage imagination, familiarize with the rhythm and intonation of a foreign language, serve for the development of diverse language capabilities and bring a different approach to teaching a foreign language. The fairytale is understandable to children as they already encounter it in their mother tongue. In addition, it has many textual and linguistic features that relieve the comprehension of the text in foreign language, which motivates the students for further learning. This characteristics are considered to be: time sequence, repetitions, predictability, simple grammar, concrete text and content. Nevertheless, the teachers have to prepare the fairytale didactically, so they can achieve the imposed curriculum goals and develop language skills in the foreign language with it. Therefore the empirical part tries to present the use of fairytales in the Italian classes. In the empirical part, we have gathered the perspective of three teachers that use fairytales in their Italian lessons. It was shown that they were encouraged in the use of fairytales by preparing for a competition in which they had to familiarize the students with a fairytale in Italian. They have realised that fairytales motivate students and have many features that can be used in teaching a foreign language. Knowing the contents of a fairytale, rich visual material, simple grammar structures and specific vocabulary facilitates learning Italian for the students. Didactic preparation of the fairytale varies according to the fairytale that the interviewed teachers have chosen. The fairytales that are already rearranged for the foreign language lessons do not need additional preparations, as they are already oriented to direct the teacher at work. As opposed to these, authentic fairytales need a more detailed didactic preparation, where the teacher usually simplifies the grammar tense and text and if necessary, shortens the fairytale. Among the interviewed teachers the sole use of fairytales in the classroom differed. They delivered the fairytale in different ways; with narration or with video streaming. Activities that they have carried out after the listening were mostly related to text comprehension and vocabulary development. However, they did not perform any activities before the listening or these were simply linked to character introduction or the course of lessons.
|
