This article is part of my master dissertation in Didattica e promozione della lingua e cultura italiane a stranieri, presented on 2008 at Università Ca’ Foscari di Venezia, and explores the ways in which texts used in Italian LS classes reflect Italian culture and civiltà . Frequently it is found inadequate use of text in Italian LS courses in Rio de Janeiro leading to didactic and operational difficulties regarding how to approach certain themes/arguments related to Italian culture and civiltà . The first aspect analyzed in this work is the traditional view used on the text which many teachers still adopt, reinforcing the idea that the text is a verbal object and the reflection on it in LS classes must be predominantly based on grammar. Another important aspect is the mistaken knowledge of culture and civiltà terms and their implications on LS classes, stimulating stereotypical behavior on teachers and students. Considering such situation, the present article aims to present a discussion on the efficiency of comics’ usage as an alternative solution to this issue. This proposal, based on sociosemiotic and ludic didactics, intend to present a more motivating class capable of improving the student communication skills. In order to exemplify this proposal we used comics from the Mafalda comics book, and the presented class activities, which follow the didactic proposal of Domenico Volpi, aim to create the link between culture and civiltà themes with the Italian language usage, also exploring the verbal-iconic integration present in comics.
