ITALIAN COLLOCATIONS IN THE TEACHING OF ITALIAN AS A FOREIGN LANGUAGE

Sa？etak Collocations are expressions made of two or more words that make phrasal units and are of great importance in daily use, especially when learning a foreign language (L2), because they have no immediate formal equivalent in different languages. In the academic year 2015/2016 at the Department of Italian of the University of Zadar, a questionnaire was given in the framework of the seminar workshop in order to conduct a survey on the use of collocation in the teaching of Italian in high school (language and general grammar school). This was made on a sample of 25 native Croatian speakers teaching the Italian language in high schools. The first part of the paper is theoretical, the second part provides teachers with several teaching methods useful in the teaching of Italian collocations, and the third part deals with the analysis of data obtained via questionnaires. The main objective is to facilitate teaching this linguistic phenomenon using various activities, thus improving students’ language skills. It is assumed that the majority of respondents are not aware of the use of Italian collocations in the classroom because the term and interest in "a combination of words subjected to the language restriction" (Je？ek, 2005: 178) has only come to life in recent years and is often replaced by idioms. This work should be a contribution and impetus for further research that would raise awareness about the importance of teaching Italian collocations in the teaching process