Autonomy in language learning: a case study with Italian as a second language

The aim of this paper is to investigate the development of autonomy in learning Italian as a second language (L2). The analysis is based on the experience of the language advisor of the “Centro per l’Autoapprendimento” (CAP) of the Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore (Milan) with sixteen foreign students. In the introduction, the usefulness of university self-access centres (SAC) is briefly introduced, and the CAP is presented. The second part of the article concerns one of the case studies on sixteen foreign university students who participated in a didactic project on the development of the oral production skill that introduced them to the CAP, the language advisor, and the concept of autonomy in learning Italian. The project ended with a final self-assessment questionnaire that allowed the learners to understand their strengths and weaknesses, and enabled the language advisor to verify the effectiveness of the activity.