Why and How Should Chinese Be Learned? A Preliminary Investigation regarding Italian High School Learners

Compared to other European countries such as France, Chinese language and culture has only recently become part of the Italian high school curriculum. Statistics, however, provide an optimistic outlook for the role this subject can play in the education of Italian students (Brezzi & Lioi, 2018). While some data have been published relating to the introduction and growth of Chinese in secondary schools, research into how and why students choose to learn Chinese is still lacking. The present work aims at filling this gap by describ- ing and discussing high school learner motivation and their favored activities with regard to learning Chinese. The chapter is divided into six parts: the first provides an account of the growth of learning Chinese at secondary school level in Italy, while the sec- ond illustrates the aspect of motivation in a foreign language with particular attention to studies that focus on learning Chinese. The third section presents the methodology used to collect data from a sample of high school Italian learners of Chinese, while the fourth illustrates and discusses the results. The fifth section presents some of the pedagogical implications based on our data and it is followed by the conclusion in the last part.