Investigating Socio-Pragmatic Awareness of Italian as a Foreign Language Learners via Computer-Assisted Web Interviews

Learning a foreign language is a cognitive and social phenomenon which involves various factors. Many studies on how learners develop competences have already been conducted on a large scale, embracing many fields of research. But what happens exactly when the process of acquiring new communicative elements of the target language is taking place in learners’ mind? A group of learners of Italian as a foreign language of B1 and B2 levels helped to give a tentative answer to this question, taking part to a Computer- Assisted Web Interviewing (CAWI) investigation, through which qualitative data have been collected through face-to-face online sessions based on Think-Aloud Protocol (TAP) methodology. With this presentation, focusing on how learners deal with different degrees of formality in various communication contexts, these data will be employed to highlight the cognitive phenomena of interference and transfer taking place contextually with the development of socio-pragmatic awareness. As expected results, the verbalization of learners’ thoughts during the accomplishment of specific tasks provided valuable insights to be possibly strategically employed in Italian as a foreign language teaching contexts, both online and in class.