The concept of 'diversity' is embedded in the learning and teaching of Italian as a second language, and increasingly emerges in everyday school life. By presenting an educational pathway designed and implemented within a multi-class context, the contribution seeks to highlight how the appreciation of linguistic heterogeneity, in a multi-ethnic group with varying abilities, can be transformed from a problem into a resource.

LABLITA-Suite. Resources for the acquisition of Italian as a second language – LABLITA-suite provides technology-enhanced learning resources for the acquisition of Italian L2. IMAGACT allows for mastering the semantic properties of action verbs in the early phases of language acquisition. The LABLITA corpus of Spoken Italian can be used for training learners for face to face conversations. RIDIRE and CORDIC provide corpus linguistic tools for accessing Italian phraseology, which is useful for enhancing writing capabilities in the various domains of language usage.

The objective of this paper is twofold. First, it aims at problematizing the inhomogeneity of linguistic features belonging to the so-called neostandard Italian, often presented as a monolithic inventory of linguistic forms and phenomena. Second, it intends to set such a linguistic variety in the context of Italian language pedagogy, still strongly anchored to the normative grammar and to the canons of standard Italian. Specifically, some rapidly consolidating neo-standard traits will be examined under the following aspects: structural and semantic complexity, functional and communicative value and extension in today’s usage.