Academic Communication in Italian L1 and L2: An Analysis of the Communicative Needs of Italian-speaking and International University Students

This study reports the results a questionnaire about the communicative needs perceived by Italian-speaking and international university students in formal written and oral communication with a professor. Writing formal e-mails in an academic context to authoritative figures or engaging in conversation with a professor are (socio)linguistic tasks that are not easy to accomplish but, at the same time, they are crucial for self-promotion in a study career. The questionnaire was administered online to 91 native speakers of Italian (PN) and 147 non-native speakers (PNN), members of one of the international mobility study programmes (MI). Overall, the data indicate that both groups perceive as challenging to write an e-mail to a professor, particularly to perform face-threatening acts such as requests. Regarding oral interaction with the teacher, two common areas of criticality emerge: being fluently and controlling linguistic anxiety. For PNNs, an intercultural critical point is also noted: a proportion of mobile students, in fact, state that they do not know whether it is appropriate to address an Italian professor formally or not.