Teaching and learning English in Italy: Past, present and future perspectives

This collection of essays traces back the development of English language education in Italy, in a timeframe that stretched from the 19th century, when English started to es tablish itself as a foreign language taught in Italian schools, up until our days in which English language teaching and learning have been trans formed by the advent of multimodal and digital literacies, as well as Artificial Intelligence (AI). Past and present political, social, pedagogical and technological chal lenges have come to create a complex linguistic landscape for English language education in Italy, whose continuities and disruptions defy linear narratives of straightforward progress and call for a systematic investigation of the over three-hundred-year-old history of English as a foreign language (EFL) taught to Italian learners.