Brocca, Nicola, Dr.
Innrain 52, room no. 40513, 5th floor, Geiwi Tower
Consultation hours: by appointment
@nicola_brocca
About the person
- Visiting Professor, Dipartimento di Lingue e Letterature straniere e Culture moderne, Università di Torino | February - March 2023
- University Assistant (Postdoc), Institute for Didactics, University of Innsbruck | May 2019 - today
- Postdoc in the "Text & Language" cluster in the joint project of Heidelberg University and Heidelberg University of Teacher Education, Heidelberg School of Education | February 2017 - April 2019
- Teacher for Italian lessons in the language of origin, school authority for the Märkischer Kreis | March 2015 - January 2017
- Scientific advisor, I-MINT Academy, Senate Department for Education, Youth and Research, Berlin | March 2014 - July 2016
- Fellow of the educational initiative Teach First Deutschland GmbH, Berlin Teaching activities in English, French, Spanish | July 2012 - July 2014
- Lecturer for Italian, Boğaziçi Üniversitesi, Faculty of Education (50%) and Yeditepe Üniversitesi, Fine Art Department (50%), Istanbul | October 2009 - June 2012
- Doctorate (Dr phil.) at the University of Heidelberg, Romance Linguistics. Scholarship holder of the Stiftung der deutschen Wirtschaft, Visiting Researcher at the City University of New York | 2006 - 2010
- Lecturer at the Institute for Translation and Interpreting and the Department of Romance Languages at the University of Heidelberg | 2006 - 2010
- Degree in Communication Science. Laurea quinquennale in Scienze della Comunicazione, University of Padua, Italy, erasmus Programme Heidelberg University, Freemover Univesité de Nantes (FR) | 2000 - 2005
Teaching
- Basics of Italian foreign language didactics
- Media-supported foreign language teaching
- Sociopragmatics in Italian L2/ didactics of intercultural pragmatics
- Corpora in foreign language teaching: opportunities and limits
I am happy to supervise Bachelor's and Master's theses in the following subject areas:
i. Didactics of Italian in multilingual contexts
ii. Language biographies of bilingual children and adults
iii. Telecollaboration: feedback, interaction between native and non-native speakers, pragmatic (learning) episodes
iv. Use of Large Language Models (LLMs) such as ChatGPT as an innovative resource in foreign language learning and teaching
v. Students' own topic suggestions are welcome and will be supervised
Research
- DIGITASK4IC: Development of a platform for the creation of teaching/learning materials for a foreign language. Head: Ass. Prof. Ufuk Balaman, Hacettepe Üniversitesi, Dr Carmen Konzett-Firth, University of Innsbruck. Funded by: erasmus+, | 2021 - 2022
- Science4Life-Academy: Creation of OER MINT materials for students with little knowledge of German. Activity: Scientific advisor. Organisation: a project of the iMINT Academy of the Berlin Senate for Education, Youth and Family funded by Bayer Science & Education Foundation |2015 - 2017
- DIGITASK4IC | 2021 - 2022
- Promotion of Italian abroad. A comparative study in France and Germany. Final thesis: 2005
- DISDIR: Pragmalinguistic competences in interlinguistic comparison (German-Italian). Activities: Production of a corpus, pragmalinguistic analyses. Project partners: prof. ssa Elena Nuzzo and Ass. Prof. Diego Cortés Velásquez, Università Roma Tre. | 2021 - ongoing
- Semantics of prepositions in Italian L2 by German-speaking learners. Doctorate: 2007 - 2011
- LADDER: Creation of a corpus for the promotion of sociopragmatic competences in Italian L2. Activities: Project manager. Funded by DI4DH, Austrian Academy of Sciences | 2020 - ongoing
- DIGITASK4IC | 2021 - 2022
- Implicit language in social media: pragmatic analysis of political tweets. Psycholinguistic findings and didactic transfer. Project partners: Dr Davide Garassino, ZHAW, dott. ssa. Viviana Masia, Università Roma Tre
- Digital media in heritage language teaching: Activity: Teacher surveys, design-based research and teacher training with the Migration Office of the Cologne District Government. | 2019 - ongoing
Language-sensitive teaching
- LADDER | 2020 - ongoing
Publications
Selection
- Brocca N., Nuzzo, E., Cortés Velásquez D., Rudigier M. (2023): Linguistic politeness across Austria and Italy: Backing out of an invitation with an instant message, Journal of Pragmatics 209, p. 56-70, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pragma.2023.02.018
- Brocca, N. (2021), "LADDER: Un corpus di scritture digitali per l'insegnamento della pragmatica in L2. Un esempio di analisi di disdette in WhatsApp." in Italiano Lingua Due, 1, 241-259. https://riviste.unimi.it/index.php/promoitals/article/view/15867
- Brocca, N. (2020), "Impact of media in vocabulary learning and teaching-learning settings: a quasi-experiment in Italian as heritage language classes" in Italiano Lingua Due (12/2), 257 - 267. https://riviste.unimi.it/index.php/promoitals/article /view/15070
- Brocca, N. (2020), "Implizite Bedeutung in sozialen Netzwerken. Nachhaltige Bildung in L2 Französisch.". In S. Kapelari, T. Schnabl, & J. Taglieber (Eds.), Interdisziplinäre fachdidaktische Diskurse zur Bildung für nachhaltige Entwicklung. Innsbruck: innsbruck university press (iup). https://library.oapen.org/bitstream/handle/20.500.12657/46248/1/9783991060192.pdf
- Brocca, N. (2020), Social media in education and foreign language teaching. An introduction. In: heiEDUCATION Journal. Transdiziplinäre Studien zur Lehrerbildung 5, S. 9 - 23. https://doi.org/10.17885/heiup.heied.2020.5
Scientific organisation
- Co-administration of the Twitter account of the Institute of Didactics: @fachdid_UIBK
- Contact person for digital media at the Faculty of Teacher Education