General objectives

The possibilities of using DV in a second language acquisition environment have been explored at our department, and interesting applications were identified with more than one didactic advantage. In the first place, we agreed that DV would improve the digital literacy of our students, or introduce them altogether to the computer or the web. Secondly, we saw it as a precious opportunity for students to become acquainted with at least the basics of textual philology, as well as to provide them with a tool through which they could reflect on what has already changed in the literary strand of philological studies considering the influence of computer upon the writing process . The third advantage we identified was that the material had enormous potential in terms of textual analysis.
The archive contained pieces of fiction which students could analyse in the different versions in which the author was trying out her own writing and style. In this respect, the fact that students would work on authentic sources and exclusively in the target language would make the experiment even more challenging.
In other words, DVs was an unmissible opportunity for them to witness and analyse pieces of contemporary Italian fiction in its process of being written and composed.