The research and application of the Narrative format model.

In the last 15 years many studies focused on the use of the Narrative Format model for language education, aiming at analysing the factors of its effectiveness and showing the possible outcomes in terms of language learning in children. The possibility of applying the NF in different contexts and for different aims is guaranteed by the psychological and psycholinguistic bases of the model. In fact, with the NF activities the learners are put in a situation where their cognitive, social, relational and linguistic processes can work as they work during the natural language acquisition or even better, as described in the chapter XX by Taeschner. In this perspective, learning to speak a new language at school, or in the family, when the learner is a 24 months old child or an adolescent, or improving language production in L1 in children with special needs at school or in specific clinical setting should be pursued using the same mental processes, and using strategies and activities that activate and facilitate these processes. Furthermore, a big effort has been done in the last decades to develop at the same time the theoretical thinking about (first, second, foreign) language learning, the experimentation of teaching methodologies, interactional strategies and the development of teaching material and evaluation tools in order to allow professionals of language education to fully profit from the model. In this chapter the main results of the studies on the NF model will be presented and discussed in the different domains of application. Further directions for research will also be presented and discussed.