Since the 1980s, the rapid development of Information Communication Technology (ICT) has reshaped contemporary society and culture, bringing about significant and far-reaching effects, changing the way people perceive, think, act, in- teract, and communicate. Language is presented through different media, from rice paper and parchment, in the ancient world to tablet computers and smartphones today. Moreover, language adapts to media in different ways, thus affecting the way language users perceive, communicate, and interact. In the age of the Internet, where information and communication technologies are flourishing, people’s life situations have long since moved beyond the real world to the online world.
For Italian language teachers, the Internet and information technology, with their rich expressions, have great potential for teaching. The Internet is a constant- ly updated database that second language teachers can access to prepare and design lessons. There is a wealth of authentic material there written by native Italian speak- ers for Italian language, including a wide variety of text types from which learners can draw valuable cultural content. This paper seeks to explore the possibility of in- corporating online Italian teaching resources and multimedia teaching materials, which are currently prevalent, into the teaching of Italian in the context of intercul- tural communication.
