Insegnare “per competenze” nella scuola secondaria di primo grado: un’unità d’apprendimento di lingua straniera

As a result of a number of European recommendations, the Italian school system has recently experienced major changes in both teaching and assessment throughout the primary and secondary schools. Teachers are now asked to go beyond the traditional mastery of theoretical knowledge evaluating the competencies that the learners may achieve at the end of each learning unit. The present paper is divided into three main sections. The first one offers an outline of the evolution of the “didattica per competenze” during the last decade, in the second section the topic is more specifically related to the field of second language learning and teaching. In the closing section instead, an example of learning unit is illustrated and commented with some final remarks on the implications that this new teaching approach may produce in the Italian school in the next future.