1950s textbooks for EFL teaching and learning in Italy: A historiographical analysis

This paper is a case study focusing on a corpus of textbooks of English for Italian learners published in 1952, retrieved from the online Catalogo Nazionale OPAC SBN (https://opac.sbn.it) and consulted at the archives of major Italian public libraries. The texts were examined based on their structure, contents, purposes and teaching approach with the aim of identifying distinctive generic features and proposing an initial classification. They represent variations of a similar genre, catering to pedagogical purposes and encompassing different content derived from didactic materials that were employed both before and during the fascist era, as well as newly devised resources. The historiographical textual analysis provides some insights into post-Fascism educational policies. Furthermore, it unveils the texts’ glottodidactic methods and approaches originating from Britain and North America, which triggered profound changes in the history of language teaching.