Roberta Linciano

How did I come to the realisation that I wanted to become a teacher of English? Well, this is certainly a thorny question. At school I liked studying any subject although I preferred literature and creative writing. My appetite for knowledge was voracious. I was fascinated by science and the humanities in equal measure under the influence, I guess, of my older brothers - a polyglot physicist and a self-taught artist respectively – who gave me a deep insight into the rational and imaginative nature of the human mind.

When I decided to study Modern Languages at university, I had clouded and unclear ideas about my future. The only certainties were my love for the English language and my strong desire to learn to master this “lingua franca” at my best as if satisfying this irresistible urge was the key to my happiness. It was not merely improving my communicative skills but decoding the hidden messages of fictional and non fictional texts which I found enjoyable and I could not stop sharing my opinions with my classmates in a cooperative learning atmosphere. When I started to offer private tuition in English and French literature to undergraduate students I came to the conclusion that making literature more accessible to others was rewarding and challenging. Making students less intimidated by the intricacies of texts and more inclined to interpret them, to speculate about them and to inquire into them became my primary mission.