Maria De Blasio, the community liaison officer for Naval Support Activity Naples reads out in English events of “car crash” for a reading and dictation exercise for Italians studying English at the Navy support site. (Sandra Jontz / S&S)
Maria De Blasio, the community liaison officer for Naval Support Activity Naples reads out in English events of “car crash” for a reading and dictation exercise for Italians studying English at the Navy support site. (Sandra Jontz / S&S)
Carmela Dell’Abersana, 34, executive assistant to the mayor of Gricignano, compares her written notes with the dictation lesson plan. (Sandra Jontz / S&S)
Students studying English, free-of-charge and offered by volunteer teachers at the U.S. Navy base in Naples, write in notebooks during a dictation lesson Thursday. (Sandra Jontz / S&S)
Donato Verdoliva, left, a carabinieri officer working in the town of Teverola, reads in English a passage from a lesson plan dealing with the events of a car crash, while fellow officer Pasquale Di Caprio writes the passages in English. (Sandra Jontz / S&S)
NAPLES, Italy — Massimo Magurno has an excellent reason for studying English: “Because the world don’t speak Italian.”
Two evenings a week, Magurno and others fill classrooms at Fleet and Family Support Center on the U.S. Navy’s support site in Gricignano to tackle lessons in conversational English, which is taught free-of-charge by three volunteers from the base.
“It’s very necessary to speak English,” said Magurno, an officer with the Aversa district office of the carabinieri, Italy’s military police.
The students mostly are Italian police and carabinieri, but the class also includes civilians in administrative roles with local governments who often deal with Americans or foreigners who speak English.
Carmela Dell’Abersana, for example, works as the executive assistant to the mayor of Gricignano. With Americans living and working so close by, it’s imperative she learn the language, she said.
Italian officials who work with and around Americans clamored for such a service, and last September the base’s community liaison office set up the first class, said organizer Maria De Blasio, the base community liaison officer. Base commander Capt. Floyd Hehe tossed support behind the effort, but told De Blasio he couldn’t fund it.
“The command didn’t have money, so it had to be all voluntary work,” she said.
Costanza Chirico, who for years taught as a private tutor, jumped at the chance.
“We don’t always do things for the money,” said Chirico, who now works that the Information, Tours and Travel office at the support site. “We also live for what gives us satisfaction.”
The evening classes, taught in three-month sessions, don’t delve much into English grammar and finer language points, but allow students to become more familiar with spoken English, said volunteer Pasquale Franco.
Conversational English with a twist of law enforcement terms tossed in for flavor, that is. Like Thursday, when De Blasio dictated from a lesson plan the events of an automobile collision, introducing students to words like “scene,” “crash,” “license” and “officer.”
Late last year, word of the Navy’s free tutorial spread among local Italian law enforcement commanders. As a result, the program grew from a handful of students to now 30, divided into the two classes taught Tuesday and Thursday evenings, De Blasio said.
Francesco Lettieri, the son of Gricignano mayor Andrea Lettieri, said learning English helps him not only in his studies to become a lawyer, but also to communicate with American friends and acquaintances who live in town.
“And English is the [world’s] most important language now,” he said — in English.
