=Paper=
{{Paper
|id=Vol-3937/paper14
|storemode=property
|title=Building an Archive of ELT Materials Used in the 20th Century in Italy: Preliminary Observations
|pdfUrl=https://ceur-ws.org/Vol-3937/paper14.pdf
|volume=Vol-3937
|authors=Martin Ruskov,Emanuela Tenca
|dblpUrl=https://dblp.org/rec/conf/ircdl/RuskovT25
}}
==Building an Archive of ELT Materials Used in the 20th Century in Italy: Preliminary Observations==
https://ceur-ws.org/Vol-3937/paper14.pdf
Building an Archive of ELT Materials Used in the 20th
Century in Italy: Preliminary Observations
Martin Ruskov, Emanuela Tenca†
Dipartimento di Lingue, Letterature, Culture e Mediazioni, Università degli Studi di Milano, Piazza Sant’Alessandro 1, 20123
Milano, Italy
Abstract
In this paper we present a new online archive of books for English language teaching (ELT), published throughout
the 20th century in Italy. No such systematic overview existed previously. Firstly, we obtained descriptive
statistics of ELT literature in order to ensure that our archive features a representative sample. To gauge the level
of representativeness of our archive, we queried relevant categories in the OPAC SBN and established a sampling
baseline. We discuss how our sample meets the specified baseline, and how it falls short of it. The variety of
metadata that we introduced for the purposes of the archive support an in-depth, multidimensional interpretation
of the books. We include a case study to exemplify how this archive may be used for conducting research in the
field of history of language learning and teaching. The archive also contributes to teacher education by raising
awareness of pedagogical changes in ELT practices.
Keywords
History of language learning and teaching, English language teaching, digital archive, foreign language education
in Italy, phenomenographic visual exploration
1. Introduction
Archives and special collections are important resources for knowledge dissemination [1, 2, 3], as they
capture extensive information which is relevant for specific domains. Additionally, specialised archives
represent an important layer of metadata providing fine-grained contextual details, useful for both
research and practice. In this paper, we present an online archive of books used for English language
teaching (henceforth ELT) in Italy throughout the 20th century, the Italy ELT Archive (henceforth
IELTA)1 .
The IELTA is a two-year project started in September 2023 at the Department of Languages, Literatures,
Cultures and Mediations at the University of Milan. The design and development of the IELTA is based
on the premise that the study of how ELT has developed in Italy inevitably passes through an overview
of the learning materials available in this context [4]. To date, however, no systematic source for such
information has been made available. The closest such source is the Warwick ELT Archive [5], but due
to its broad scope, it has only very limited coverage of the educational materials used in Italy. Indeed,
the Warwick ELT Archive is a historical collection of published and unpublished documents, available
primarily offline and partially online, which trace the history of ELT and applied linguistics between
the 1880s and 1990s from a predominantly British and American perspective.
The IELTA is a freely accessible resource collecting bibliographic records of materials such as course
books, readers, spelling books, etc., which will help advance research into ELT history in the Italian
context [6, 7, 8, 9]. While providing useful information for students and researchers interested in the
field, the project will support English language teacher education with a tool enhancing teachers’
IRCDL 2025: 21st Conference on Information and Research Science Connecting to Digital and Library Science, February 20-21 2025,
Udine, Italy
†
The paper was jointly planned by the authors. The individual contributions are as follows. Martin Ruskov wrote sections 3.2,
3.3, and 3.4; Emanuela Tenca wrote sections 2, 3, 3.1, 4, and 4.1. Sections 1, 4.2, and 5 were written by both authors.
$ martin.ruskov@unimi.it (M. Ruskov); emanuela.tenca@unimi.it (E. Tenca)
https://islab.di.unimi.it/team/martin.ruskov@unimi.it (M. Ruskov)
0000-0001-5337-0636 (M. Ruskov); 0000-0001-9098-2746 (E. Tenca)
© 2025 Copyright for this paper by its authors. Use permitted under Creative Commons License Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0).
1
https://italy-elt-archive.unimi.it
CEUR
ceur-ws.org
Workshop ISSN 1613-0073
Proceedings
awareness of the principles underpinning ELT materials for Italian learners, and it will enable them to
critically evaluate current teaching methods, approaches, and practices. The richness of metadata in
the archive lends itself to a wide range of research methodologies, including archival and quantitative
approaches [10, 11, 12], as well as qualitative ones, such as topic and content analysis [13, 14, 15].
In this paper we present the IELTA by firstly providing background information about the field of
research to which it belongs, namely history of language learning and teaching (henceforth HoLLT),
and by contextualising it in the area of special archives and collections for educational purposes (Section
2). Next, we outline its data model, we describe its technical platform, and we discuss fundamental
issues around the design and development of the archive (Section 3). To the best of our knowledge,
the IELTA is the first of its kind for the purposes it is meant to fulfil and for its variety of metadata.
Therefore, we were confronted with challenges pertaining to the size of the sample. In point of fact, the
IELTA does not aim to showcase Italian ELT materials production in an exhaustive fashion. Instead,
its objective is to provide a representative snapshot of materials for English language learning and
teaching in the 20th century that can be significant for teachers looking to consolidate and expand their
knowledge of methods and approaches for ELT and their uptake in Italy. Moreover, it is our contention
that a representative rather than exhaustive sample can better cater for the needs of researchers in
the field of HoLLT, given the wealth of information it provides not only about the books it holds, but
also about their authors and publishers. In order to reach a satisfactory level of representation, the
IELTA was compared against the Open Public Access Catalogue (OPAC) of the Italian National Library
Service. In order to exemplify the type of research afforded by the IELTA, we discuss a case study using
phenomenographic visual exploration [16, 17]. The analysis is centred on educational changes in Italy
between the 1970s and 1980s, and the impact they had on the methods and approaches applied in the
books and the type of technology supporting them (Section 4). As the IELTA is still developing, we
conclude with a discussion of our preliminary results, limitations of the present study, and further
avenues for research.
2. Background
The research field of HoLLT has been growing considerably in the European context over the last few
years [18, 19, 20, 21]. However, research into the history of ELT still needs to be expanded, especially
considering its potential applications in English language teacher education [19]. Italy is a case in
point, as historiographical studies conducted so far have primarily centred on French [22, 23, 24] and
Spanish [25], with a focus on language teaching materials. This type of investigation would be of great
value for scholarly research into the English language too.
The IELTA aims to fill this gap through the setting up of a digital archive of English language learning
and teaching materials published in Italy in the 20th century [4]. The development and implementation
of the IELTA follows in the footsteps of an important resource for pursuing research into the history of
English language learning and teaching, i.e. the Warwick ELT Archive [5], a physical collection of ELT
texts created by Prof. R. Smith in the Department of Applied Linguistics at the University of Warwick.
Promotion and knowledge dissemination of the Warwick ELT Archive and its activities is supported by
a website which contains a wealth of digitised contents, including books, documents, and audio-visual
materials relevant to ELT history. Hence, part of the collection of the Warwick ELT Archive can be
accessed online too.
While the Warwick ELT Archive is primarily physical and does not have the same depth of metadata
as the IELTA (see 3.1 below), some projects have been carried out recently for the creation of archives
that can be consulted online, designed with specific sets of criteria in mind. An important example
is Contrastiva, a database which is part of a project led by Professor F. San Vicente at the University
of Bologna [26]. The aim of Contrastiva is to trace the history of the teaching of Spanish to Italian
native speakers and of Italian to Spanish native speakers from the 16th century onwards. To do that, it
gives access to two digital collections, one pertaining to lexicographical publications (324 bibliographic
records) and the other to grammar books (391 bibliographic records). Another relevant project is the
Eighteenth-Century English Grammars database [27], led by Dr N. Yáñez-Bouza (University of Vigo)
and Dr M. E. Rodríguez-Gil (University of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria), which contains bibliographic
records of materials for native speakers (323 items), as well as records about their authors (275 items).
The bibliographic records of the grammar books in the EGEC database rely on a rich set of metadata
attributes (21 in total, some with further sub-classifications) 2 , which refer not only to the characteristics
of the books themselves (e.g. their title, year, place of publication, target audience), but they also provide
information about their writers (e.g. name, gender, occupation), and the sources consulted for analysing
the books (e.g. bibliographies, studies, and other scholarly publications); information about the sources
is provided to assist other scholars conducting further research in the field [28].
As mentioned above, one of the prime objectives of the IELTA is to support English language teacher
education in the Italian local context. The value of archives and special collections for pedagogical pur-
poses, especially in the humanities, has been the object of scholarly discussion for several decades, and
it began before the introduction and subsequent spread of digital archives [29, 30]. Publishing primary
sources online means that they can be disseminated more widely, thus extending their participation
framework beyond their traditional academic audience. Furthermore, the conviction that physical
primary sources are more effective in engaging students than digitised ones has been challenged,
suggesting that online archives can provide students with an equally valuable learning experience,
provided that issues related to search interface are properly addressed, and that the sources are given
the right amount of contextual information, which may be lacking online [31].
The adoption of archives and special collections in learning settings is particularly student-centred,
as it helps develop students’ skills in researching, investigating, and analysing [30]. Indeed, the use
of primary sources engages students in a process of discovery that goes beyond the transmission of
knowledge from teacher to student [32]. Other positive outcomes of working with archives and special
collections are better information retention and the development of metacognitive skills. The latter, in
particular, are fostered by the use of primary sources in real-life tasks that prompt students’ reflection
on both their achievements and areas for improvement [33]. Further skills that may be acquired pertain
to information evaluation, critical thinking, and independent research [34].
The literature to date has focused on the application of archives and special collection in primary,
secondary, and higher education, mostly to teach history and social sciences [32, 35, 36, 37, 34], and,
to a lesser degree, other disciplines within the humanities such as English, religion, political science,
and architecture [38]. Instruction based on primary sources in higher education appears to involve
undergraduates rather than postgraduates. Indeed, the former are, in general, less familiar with archives
and special collections than the latter, who instead are more likely to be involved in archival research
as part of their academic career [39]. To the best of our knowledge, there is a gap regarding the use
of primary sources for teacher training, including the training of pre-service and in-service teachers
of foreign languages. However, in the field of HoLLT there is growing awareness that investigation
of primary sources such as learning and teaching materials can aid in uncovering the nexus between
theoretical aspects of language education, such as the description of methods and approaches for
teaching languages, and their implementation in the teaching practice, as influenced by the local and
historical context surrounding those materials [20, 4]. Therefore, a need has emerged for integrating the
study of materials in foreign language teacher education, which will benefit from the use of specifically
designed archives and special collections. This obviously elicits questions pertaining to the fundamental
criteria for the design of such resources as well as those challenges which may emerge during their
development.
When creating an archive such as the IELTA, exhaustiveness is hardly possible due to the considerable
number of primary sources. In order to make sure that the featured materials are representative of the
available literature in the field, it is necessary to turn to broader, more exhaustive catalogues as a point of
reference. In Italy, thanks to the work of the Central Institute for the Union Catalogue of Italian Libraries
and for Bibliographic Information (ital. abbr. ICCU), this type of resource is represented by the Open
2
The complete list of metadata attributes and their subdivisions can be consulted at
https://varieng.helsinki.fi/CoRD/corpora/ECEG/basic.html#database_entries.
Public Access Catalogue (OPAC) of the Italian National Library Service (SBN - Servizio Bibliotecario
Nazionale). The OPAC lends itself to automated extraction of bibliographic data3 , but certain historical
limitations need to be considered. In particular, despite the existence of systematic efforts to catalogue
entries in Italy at least since the late 19th century, it is not until the fourth edition of the corresponding
manual published in 1979 that a consistent representation of published literature in SBN has been
obtained [40]. Continuous archival and integration efforts have provided some retrospective coverage
of published materials, yet there is a noticeable gap both in quality and quantity before the 1970s, and
semantic subject indexing was introduced only in the 1990s, drawing from a Soggettario from the
1950s [41].
3. Overview of the Archive
The IELTA builds on the physical collection available at the Department of Languages, Literatures,
Cultures and Mediations at the University of Milan, with the addition of books consulted in Italian
libraries (see 3.4), and it provides a representative coverage of the literature used for ELT in Italy
throughout the 20th century. As such, it aims not only to provide bibliographic information about a
relevant selection of materials, but also details about, for instance, their authors, target learners, and
methods and approaches adopted in the materials themselves. It also offers previews of book covers,
tables of contents, and sample pages. It is intended to be used both for research and education purposes,
especially with reference to teacher training, as indicated in the previous section.
To provide a comprehensive account of the IELTA, below we describe the developed data model, the
technical realisation, the methodology for selecting the represented materials, as well as the contents
featured so far.
3.1. Featured Data Model
Rather than a standard bibliographic knowledge base, we were interested in the pedagogical motivations
and implications of the entries in the archive. Thus we elaborated additional metadata and taxonomies
to be included with the data entries. The archive comprises entities not only for the books sampled, but
also for their authors and publishers, as shown in Figure 1. As for the authors, we were interested in
their professional background and their country of origin. Such information was retrieved from the
paratextual contents of the materials, or by conducting further online research. By doing so we were
able to compile a list of relevant professional typologies, and a list of countries. As for the publishers,
information about their primary location was obtained by bringing together data from different online
sources (e.g. the websites of the publishers and entries in the Treccani encyclopedia4 ).
As for the books, we aimed to provide a multifaceted description (see Figure 1). This was obtained by
developing a framework for investigating the materials which draws inspiration from the metadata
attributes in the EGEC database (see Section 2), and that takes into account the literature on the analysis
of language teaching materials [42, 43, 44]. One the one side, this considers the context of use of the
materials (e.g. education level), also providing information about the learner typology they target (e.g.
their age, proficiency level); on the other, it focuses on elements that are related to the materials “as
they are” [43, p.64], including information about their production (e.g. year and place of publication),
physical aspects (e.g. number of pages, use of visuals) and, most importantly, aspects connected to the
use of the materials as “an aid to teaching and learning a foreign language” [42, p.182], such as their
methodology and content. Thus, the metadata attributes implemented in the IELTA, are indicative of
the overall design of the books, which were investigated in-depth, including both their textual and
paratextual components (e.g. tables of contents, prefaces, introductions). Since the IELTA is meant as
a tool for raising teachers’ awareness regarding the principles underlying ELT materials production
in the Italian context, the attributes related to the methods are of primary importance. These were
3
An example of such extraction is featured in Ruskov and Sullam [16].
4
https://www.treccani.it
«Enum» «Enum» «Enum»
Method/Approach Target Learner’s Age Teaching/Learning Context
Audio-lingual Young learners Book Higher education
Communicative Adolescents Title: string Upper secondary school
Direct Adults Year of publication: year Lower secondary school
Grammar-translation Edition: integer 0..n Vocational courses
Integrated 0..n Number of pages: integer Self-study
Lexical Number of volumes: integer
Notional-functional 0..n Teacher's book: boolean
Oral-situational Physical copy at archive: boolean 0..n «Enum»
Structure-global audio-visual Where else present: string Proficiency level
Short Description: string Beginner
1..n 1..n
Elementary
«Enum» Publisher Author Intermediate
Visuals Advanced
Publisher Name: string Name: string
Cartoons Description: string Country of origin: string
Comic strips 0..n URL: URL Short Biography: string «Enum»
Drawings Archive: URL Sources: string Supplementary Materials
Photos Sources: string Appendices
Audio recordings
0..n Audiocassette/s
0..n CD/s
«Enum» Place of DVD/s
Type of material publication «Enum»
0..n Type of Author Keys to the exercises
1..n
Conversation book HQ Software
Course book location Academic Tests
Pedagogical grammar book «Taxonomy» Materials writer Transparencies
1
Reader Location Teacher Videocassette/s
Spelling book city: string Teacher trainer Vinyl record/s
Workbook country: string Translator Workbook
Figure 1: IELTA data model shown as an UML class diagram.
identified from the literature around methods and approaches for foreign language teaching [45, 46, 47].
In this sense, the books were analysed focusing, for example, on the type of activities they include
and the techniques used for the exercises. The analysis also took into account statements made by
the authors regarding their methodological choices, as can be read in the prefaces and introductions
(when present) of the books. Further attributes indicate the availability of supplementary materials
and a teacher’s book. These convey a more precise idea of the realisation of the materials in terms of
additional resources which will support both learners and teachers [48, 49, 50].
Finally, the archive also features short descriptions of the items, hyperlinks to secondary sources,
and scanned book extracts, which allow for qualitative exploration of the archive contents.
3.2. Technical Platform
For the implementation, free and open source platforms were considered, so that we could benefit from
the accumulated experience of other projects. One notable option we considered is Omeka5 , which is
seen as a standard solution for catalogues and archives. However, due to our analytical purposes and
richness of our data, which differ from standard bibliographic knowledge graphs (such as Dublin Core
and MARC), we preferred to use a platform that allows experimentation without the need of an a priori
definition of a new domain ontology.
Another platform that is adopted widely and has good usability and maintainability is WordPress [51],
therefore we considered solutions building on it. Our final choice, Tainacan6 , is an extension of
WordPress that has been used for a number of bibliographic catalogues [52]. It allowed for the exact
representation of the model from Figure 1. It also helped map record metadata to standard ontologies
(thus, in the future, support for linked open data may be added) and afforded modifications of the model
during data entry when necessary.
5
https://omeka.org
6
https://tainacan.org
40
Books in OPAC
30
20
10
0
4 1900 1910 1920 1930 1940 1950 1960 1970 1980 1990 2000
Year of Publication
Books in IELTA
3
2
1
0
1900 1910 1920 1930 1940 1950 1960 1970 1980 1990 2000
Year of Publication
Figure 2: Distribution of the books over the years. Above: books available in the OPAC after data cleanup.
Below: books in the Italy ELT Archive.
3.3. Selection of materials
Due to the absence of previous systematic research, we had no information about the overall patterns
of publications of ELT literature in Italy. This posed a challenge to our objective of ensuring that the
materials in our archive are a representative sample of an exhaustive baseline, at least according to
attributes that we can verify, i.e. the year of publication of the books, their place of publication, and
publishers.
To address this issue, we extracted bibliographic data from the OPAC SBN to serve as our representa-
tion baseline. A sample of subjects that reflect the thematic scope in our archive was selected. To this
end, we considered the major subject categories in the OPAC, related to the English language (“lingua
inglese” in the catalogue) and selected for extraction those that appeared to contain materials related to
ELT. From this list, we extracted all categories that the OPAC interface indicated to contain more than
30 items. Thus, 10 subcategories and a total of 1981 items (with repetitions) were extracted, as detailed
in Appendix A.
As a next step, duplicates and irrelevant items were removed. For our purposes, we deemed relevant
only monographs (the term used in the OPAC, equivalent to the term “books” used in this paper),
published in Italy in the 20th century, and written in Italian, English or a combination of the two
languages. In the case of books with multiple editions, only the first one (chronologically) was retained.
Additionally, abridged works of fiction were discarded. This resulted in 786 books with a provided year
of publication, which we adopted as a baseline for our sample. The temporal distribution of these is
shown in the upper graph in Figure 2.
In terms of publishers, the extracted sample displays a very rich variety which reflects the book
market segmentation during most of the 20th century. This slowly began to change in the post-war
period when a process of consolidation started in the publishing industry [53]. Nevertheless, the
publishers which are most represented in our selection are Zanichelli (48 books), Valmartina (32 books),
Le Monnier (27 books), and Minerva (21 books). However, due to the aforementioned segmentation, we
also looked at the place of publication of the books, in addition to the publishers themselves. These
show a clearer tendency, with 185 books (about 25%) published in Milan, followed by Florence and
Bologna with 102 books each (about 13%) and Turin with 82 books (about 10%).
For the selection in our digital archive we had the physical archive in our department as a starting point.
However, in order for our digital archive to appropriately match the described baseline distribution, we
identified gaps in our physical sample and searched additional materials to fill them. For this purpose,
collections hosted in libraries in Florence, Modena, and Cremona were consulted, and this process is
still ongoing.
3.4. Results
Currently, the IELTA holds 78 books, 115 authors and 42 publishers. Among these, we are interested in
obtaining a representative sample of books published in Italy in the 20th century. In the IELTA, these
account for 75 of the book titles present in the catalogue. Distribution over time is shown in the second
graph in Figure 2.
The main concern in terms of representation of the IELTA is the relatively small number of entries
in the first half of the century. However, this corresponds to the distribution in OPAC. Such a low
proportion of recorded books may not be entirely due to lower production rates and less systematic
educational demand, but also to historical circumstances and scarcities of archival practices. Regardless
of the reason, our objective is to provide a sample of what is available in the OPAC, and therefore we
argue that the data in the IELTA align well with it.
A more focused observation of the data currently present in the archive reveals a gap in the 1910s.
Whereas this is very similar to the low representation in the OPAC, there are two clear reasons why
further representation in the IELTA is needed. One is that even if there are few preserved materials,
at least one sample should be included to represent these. The second reason is that low numbers in
the OPAC may be due to poor preservation, rather than lack of publications. Another misalignment
between the OPAC data and our archive is seen in the peaks around the years 1960 and 2000. The
first one could possibly be explained by the fact that, whereas we filtered library holdings by earliest
editions possible, about 25% of the books in our archive are second or later editions, which leads to
what may appear as a delayed publication date in the IELTA. Similarly, later editions of books that were
first published in the late 1990s would have subsequent editions in the 2000s and thus were not selected
for inclusion in our archive. Despite these plausible considerations, further work is needed to improve
representation in these three cases.
Similarly to the data from the OPAC, the most common cities of publication are Milan (21 books,
or 27% of the books in the IELTA) and Turin (17 books, or 22%). These are followed by Florence and
Bologna, each having 11 books, or about 14% of all the books in the archive. This means that Turin
has a higher degree of representation in the archive than in the baseline. The other cities are in line
with the OPAC data. The same applies to the publishers Zanichelli (10 books) and Valmartina (8 books),
which are the most represented ones. The fact that Turin is an outlier is motivated by reasons related
to the expansion of our sample. Thirteen books are stored in our physical archive, while five were
consulted in Italian libraries. Three books were added because they fill gaps in the distribution of the
year of publication (the books were published respectively in 1929, 1946, and 1968). One book was
added because it exemplifies an important type of material published between the 1980s and 1990s, i.e.
the pedagogical grammar book (see the discussion in 4.2).
4. Case Study
To illustrate the opportunities that the IELTA affords, in this section we explore how it reflects the
developments between the 1960s and 1980s that gave rise to shifts in the adoption of methods and
approaches for foreign language education. While part of these developments may be due to technolog-
ical advancements that made the use of new media much more accessible, it is hypothesised that an
important role was played by the radical changes characterising foreign language education in Italy in
the 1970s [54, 55, 9].
4.1. Educational changes in Italy between the 1970s and 1980s
The educational changes taking place in Italy between the 1970s and the 1980s had their premises in the
reform put in place in the 1960s, which transformed lower secondary school by introducing a unified
three-year system that abolished the vocational option first introduced in 1859. In this scenario, revised
national syllabuses were published for lower secondary education which ushered in methodological
shifts in foreign language teaching. These shifts, however, unfolded slowly because of inconsistencies
contained in the syllabuses themselves [54, 55]. On the one side, the value of learning foreign languages
for practical purposes was highlighted, while also stressing the importance of pronunciation and oral
skills to be improved using technological resources (e.g. films and recordings); on the other, the approach
to be applied in the classroom was based on the use of dictation, translation, and the reading of poems
and literary passages [54, 55]. This was in line with views of foreign language teaching rooted in the
long-standing tradition of grammar-translation in the Italian context. As regards technology in the
classroom, the lack of proper equipment in schools represented a major barrier to its adoption [55].
More radical changes took place between the 1970s and the 1980s thanks to the introduction of the
New National Syllabus for lower secondary school in 1979, which, in foreign language teaching, was
inspired by the concept of educazione linguistica (language education). This concept, theorised in 1975
by linguists and researchers belonging to the Gruppo di Intervento e Studio nel Campo dell’Educazione
Linguistica (GISCEL – Intervention and Study Group in the area of Language Education), was first
applied to the teaching of Italian as a native language, but it was soon extended to foreign languages, to
emphasise their usefulness in a variety of communicative functions and forms [9].
This conceptualisation of foreign language teaching also reflected the outcomes of the research
conducted at the Council of Europe in the 1970s, which contributed to the spread of communicative
language teaching (CLT). In 1971 the Council started the Modern Languages Project which aimed to
introduce a unit/credit system for modern language learning by adults [56]. This system was supported
by recommendations for intensified programs covering education at all levels. Such recommendations
regarded, among others, the use of authentic materials, research into aspects which influence language
acquisition and learning and teaching at all ages, the development of syllabuses for all learners, and the
analysis of specialised language. In this context, the needs of learners are defined in terms of language
situations (involving agents, time, and place) and the functions that a communicative act has to fulfill,
the objects to which it relates, and the means to produce the act itself [56].
4.2. Phenomenographic visual exploration
Analysis carried out on the IELTA indicates the extent to which the changes taking place in language
education impacted ELT materials production in Italy. We employed phenomenographic visual explo-
ration as a method for our analysis [16, 17]. This is a method that draws on the structure of metadata
attributes to extract visual observations in three subsequent steps:
1. Contrast, in which variation within an individual metadata attribute is explored as a dimension
of visualisation, temporarily disregarding the others.
2. Separation, in which one attribute is considered as fixed, while varying the others around it.
3. Fusion, in which a holistic understanding is aimed by exploring the free interplay between multiple
attributes.
Whereas originally Marton [17] did not define phenomenographic variation over explicitly formalised
subjects, his method readily adapts to such quantification. In our adaptation, we incrementally expand
the number of metadata attributes that become dimensions of our visualisation.
Given the changes taking place around the 1970s, the year of publication of the materials appears to
be an attribute (i.e. dimension of visualisation) of central interest: for instance we expect that these
changes impacted the adoption of methods and approaches for foreign language teaching. Another
element worth considering is the type of supplementary materials accompanying the books, since
these would be influenced by both technological advancements and the recommendations made in
the syllabuses (see 4.1). Based on these premises, we performed our analysis by first considering the
distribution, over time, of methods and approaches in the books, then their types, and finally, we took
into consideration their supplementary materials.
Figure 3: Books by aggregated approaches.
For the purpose of the analysis and to facilitate interpretation of the visualisations, we simplified
our entity attributes by grouping the values into higher-level categories. One example of this is the
categorisation of methods and approaches for foreign language teaching. These were grouped as
follows:
1. Language-oriented methods and approaches: audio-lingual, direct, grammar-translation,
lexical, oral-situational, structure-global audio-visual;
2. Communication-oriented approaches: communicative, integrated, notional-functional.
The graph in Figure 3 suggests that communication-oriented methods began to be applied in Italian
materials at the end of the 1970s. Their application increased over the 1980s and 1990s, although they
were paired in some cases with language-oriented methods. The co-occurrence of methods in the books
in the IELTA can be seen in more detail in Figure 4. In this figure we applied phenomenographic contrast
on the methods, and we applied separation between methods and year of publication in Figure 3.
Language-
oriented
Communicaton-
oriented
Figure 4: Correlation of approaches used together in books.
Figure 5: The temporal development of materials that combine language-oriented and communication-oriented
methods. “Mixed” stands for any combination of language-oriented methods.
Whereas there appears to be a clear separation, some exceptions are apparent in the lower-left corner
of the graph. One is the oral-situational method, which is language-oriented and co-occurs with the
communicative and the notional-functional methods. This is, however, something that may be expected,
considering that the oral-situational method has paved the way for CLT [47]. Instead, the co-occurrence
of the language-oriented grammar-translation and audiolingual methods with the notional-functional
method may be, at first blush, surprising. To better explain this, we apply phenomenographic separation,
hence fixing the type of material and varying the method and year of publication. We considered the
specific type (or genre) of the books where these methods are used in combination. The analysis
showed that the materials integrating differently oriented methods are course books and pedagogical
grammar books (Figure 5). As for the course books, we observe that the notional-functional method
begins to be applied together with language-oriented methods in the second half of the 1970s. Then,
language-oriented methods are no longer applied starting from the mid 1980s. This indicates how the
Italian publishing context gradually embraced CLT in course books, as can be seen by the qualitative
content analysis of the materials (see 3.1). As for the pedagogical grammar books, the situation is
different, as this genre began to appear in the second half of the 1980s, and it was designed to be used
alongside course books [7]. This is motivated by the resistance against CLT offered by some Italian
teachers, who may have been still attached to language-oriented methods and their explicit treatment
of grammar [7, 8, 9]. To cater for the preference shown by these teachers, pedagogical grammar books
were published which integrated a CLT-informed approach to grammar with techniques belonging to
grammar translation.
To further explore our data, we introduced groupings regarding the supplementary materials accom-
panying the books collected in the IELTA. This is a case of separation over the year of publication. The
supplementary materials include learning aids such as workbooks and audiocassettes [50], and other
resources such as the keys to the exercises in the books. These materials were grouped in terms of the
semiotic modes on which they are based:
1. Text and image: appendices, keys to the exercises, transparencies, workbook;
2. Audio and/or video: audiocassettes, CDs, software, videocassettes, vinyl records.
The analysis of supplementary materials was carried out comparing data from the periods before
1980 and after, i.e. focusing on changes with respect to this year. This, indeed, appears to be a turning
point in the Italian ELT materials production, considering the discussion above.
By separating the supplementary materials accompanying the books published before and after
1980 (Figure 6), it can be observed that, throughout both periods, auditory/audiovisual materials
were made available more frequently than those based on text and images. The majority of those
1980
pre post
Method/Approach
Communication- 1 37 47 5
oriented
Language- 8 28 9 15
oriented
text& audio/ other text& audio/ other
image video image video
Supplementary materials
Figure 6: Correlation between approaches and supplementary materials, separated by the year 1980.
supplementary materials were published after 1980, in parallel with the spread of communication-
oriented methodologies. The fact that such materials were added to books before the 1980s is motivated
by the application of language oriented methods such as the audiolingual and the oral-situational one,
which emphasised the importance of listening and speaking skills [45, 46, 47]. The increasing availability
of auditory/visual materials in the last decades of the century may indicate authors’ and publishers’
increasing awareness of the importance of integrating books with additional multimodal resources, in
line with recommendations that had been originally made in the national syllabuses published in the
1960s regarding the use of technologies in the foreign language classroom. At the time, however, these
technologies were not readily accessible to teachers because of lack of equipment in schools [55], as
mentioned in 4.1. We hypothesise that it took several years for reducing barriers to the use of such
technologies in the classroom.
When we applied the third step of phenomenographic visualisations - fusion, we looked more closely
at the supplementary materials, the methods, and the distribution of the books over time (Figure 7).
The graph shows how workbooks stand out as an important text and image learning aid after the
1980s, accompanying communication-oriented materials. As regards auditory aids, vinyl records were
used, although sparsely, before the 1980s. They were later, though slowly, replaced by audiocassettes
and, to a lesser extent, by videocassettes and software. Similarly to workbooks, audiocassettes are
primarily a feature of communication-oriented materials, although in few cases they supplemented
language-oriented books too.
Figure 7: A breakdown of supplementary materials accompanying books in the IELTA, based on their
publication date and method.
5. Discussion and Conclusion
Discussion and Conclusion
In this paper we have presented the Italy ELT Archive, which is the first of its kind to have such detailed
attributes about its collection of foreign language learning materials. This makes it a semantically
rich resource, which is growing continuously. Despite the limited number of records it includes at
the moment, the IELTA allows for combined in-depth quantitative and qualitative investigations, both
for the purposes of publishing and of educational research. After our validation, we can confirm that
this archive provides a representative sample of ELT literature published in Italy in the 20th century.
However, by comparing the distribution of materials over time with the data from the OPAC, some
minor deviations were identified. As a consequence, three time intervals were identified as needing
further additions: the 1910s, the 1960s, and the late 1990s. A further deviation we identified regards the
representation of places of publications in the IELTA. In our data Turin is the second most represented
city, while in the OPAC it is the fourth. We hypothesise that we may be able to correct this deviation by
expanding our sample with books published in other cities.
In the case study, we illustrated how data from the archive could be used to conduct focused
quantitative investigations. In the process, we illustrated the first steps of how well-documented
historical phenomena could be exhibited and observed in the archive data through exploratory data
visualisations.
Having explored the IELTA in terms of changes in language methodology and in the adoption of
supplementary materials, questions for conducting further research arise. For example, the data could
be queried to identify the co-occurrence of the supplementary materials with certain methods and types
of books. Another pathway for research is analysing the co-occurrence of methods and type of author.
The research could be expanded to consider the presence of visuals in the materials, and the availability
of a teacher’s book.
We have identified three other possible directions of future research. The digitised sample pages
in the archive would enable research into the book contents. This could be carried out by means of
content analysis techniques to study the structure of the books as presented in their tables of contents,
or to study their approaches as exhibited by the sample lessons.
A final, promising direction for research would be extending the analysis to the other entities
represented in the archive, namely Authors and Publishers collections. In the case of the authors,
diachronic changes in the occupations represented in the IELTA could be explored. In the case of
the publishers, the role of the places of publications could be investigated. Finally, a focus on the
authors and the publishers has the potential to illuminate the historical role of particular individuals
and organisations in the developments of ELT in Italy.
Acknowledgments
The Italy ELT Archive is a project funded by the University of Milan with a research grant awarded in
the context of the call no. 6052 published on 23/12/2022 for the line of research no. 064 titled “History
of second language teaching. A digital archive of ELT materials in Italy (1900-2000)”, Department of
Languages, Literatures, Cultures and Mediations.
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A. Appendix
The table shows categories deemed relevant and the corresponding data collected from the OPAC. The
counter column indicates numbers in each category in the OPAC interface, from which only categories
indicating more than 30 were selected for data extraction.
Subsection Counter
lingua inglese - grammatica 560
lingua inglese - testi scolastici 442
lingua inglese - manuali 249
lingua inglese - manuali di conversazione 197
lingua inglese - manuali di corrispondenza commerciale 154
lingua inglese - apprendimento 97
lingua inglese - manuali per italiani 92
lingua inglese - pronuncia 76
lingua inglese - lessico 66
lingua inglese - temi di versione 48