Adult Italian Language Teachers • Maria & Francesco Bonavita

Maria Bonavita was born in Rizziconi, a small town in the province of Reggio Calabria. She majored in Italian and French at Brooklyn College. She holds two Masters degrees, one in Italian and the other in Educational and Community Counseling from CUNY. She is a dedicated teacher who worked hard to promote Italian language and culture at the high school level as well as colleges and universities on Staten Island. She wrote an article on classroom strategies in the teaching of Italian that was published in Italica, and collaborated with her husband on the publication of an intermediate textbook in Italian. She has been very active in the American Teachers of Italian New York City chapter, and for the last decade she has conducted beginners and advanced courses in Italian at Casa Belvedere.

Francesco Bonavita was born in Rome and has dedicated his life to teaching foreign languages. He holds a BA degree in French and a minor in German. He studied for his Master degree in French at the University of Wisconsin and completed his Ph.D at CUNY in Comparative Literature on the Italian Renaissance. In addition to Italian, French, Spanish, German, and Portuguese, he has also taught Japanese. He has brought the language experience at the high school level, as well as colleges and universities. He taught at Kean University and at New York University as a supervisor of second language methodology. He published articles on second language learning and is the author of Giadino italiano, an Intermediate Italian test published by Pearson, and has a blog, www.thewondersofitaly.com wherein he writes on Italian cities, as well as the Etruscans.