EDILINGUA ΜΑΡΙΝ ΣΤΥΛ. ΠΑΝΤEDILINGUA is a leading publishing house in the field of Italian as a second/foreign language and one of the few specialized in this sector. In just a few years, thanks to well researched methodical steps, Edilingua succeeded in producing a complete collection of valuable teaching material. Our publications, which include both textbooks and supplementary books, are having a great and growing success worldwide and this is also thanks to you.

Edilingua was founded in 1996 with a very precise goal: to produce quality learning material following a new philosophy. We believe that to create good teaching books of all levels, the experience and even the talent of one or two persons simply is not enough. In fact, our entire book is the result of direct and indirect cooperation of many people, perhaps even you too...

Our philosophy

According to our philosophy, creating a teaching book requires several phases:

First of all, every book must come from the precise need of fulfilling the real learning goals of its users - students and teachers of Italian. Every Edilingua book is based on the results of a series of questionnaires that many colleagues (often, their students) fill in. It is thanks to these statistics, qualitative and quantitative, that we succeeded in producing books that are truly useful and not just theoretical. In other words, every author does not only base himself on his experience, but "exploits" so to speak, that of his colleagues, even before beginning the first draft.

During its preparation, every book is tested and experimented in the classroom and by as many teachers of Italian as possible with different teaching skill levels and at various institutions. Thanks to their valuable and detailed comments and suggestions the draft goes forward and gets completed. Just as important in this phase are the suggestions of the book editor, who often works side by side with the author.

The next step is the graphic layout, which is very important for Edilingua. Expert staff with fresh and original ideas has the task of creating and completing what the authors have developed in a mutual exchange of ideas and projects.

During and after the graphic layout, proofreading is done. Before being printed each book is carefully checked several times by many expert eyes. Printing and binding take place in modern typographies with skilled collaborators that guarantee high quality aesthetic results. The same applies to the recordings and duplication of the audio CDs, CD-ROM and DVD.

Once published, the book starts a new phase of testing. Through new questionnaires, but also through direct contact with teachers of Italian, on different occasions (fairs, conferences, seminars, email, etc.) comments and suggestions are once again collected and evaluated in order to improve, if necessary, the book and plan other new ones. In fact most of our books are already in their second or third edition, always being improved (sometimes only graphically), updated and more complete. It might not be the most profitable way to make books, but it is the only way to ensure publications that are always up to date and valid.

Quality for us!

In 2011 Edilingua celebrates its 15th anniversary ... it is a lucky year. Is that a lot? It depends on your point of view. For us they have certainly been 15 fantastic years, years that have given us so much satisfaction but at the same time have required much work and many sacrifices. We have grown a lot in these years, we have learned a lot and we met many teachers with whom we exchanged ideas, projects and hopes. It is from this incessant exchange, for which we are sincerely grateful, that we have learned so much. In other terms it is also thanks to you that we have made it this far and that we are always confident in the belief that we are moving to new future milestones.

What does it means to create, to contribute to creating and distributing new learning materials for teaching? What is this work like? It is wonderful but hard. Like so many other jobs it is wonderful because it is exciting. Many of us at Edilingua took our first steps in the workplace as teachers, in times when teaching books were very different from today, and we continue teaching because, not only it pleases us, but also because we believe that it is necessary for our work. Therefore, creating books for teaching the Italian language is nothing other than a choice, a choice that "completes" us, excites us and makes us happy. Like so many other jobs, it is a hard job because, apart from the responsibility of humbly fulfilling your needs and your students’ demands, it requires continuous improvement in the quality. Quality that today means:

• choosing to publish relatively few books per year, because not everything can be done well. We carefully select the authors we work with, above all based on their creative and innovative ideas. And we only go ahead with publishing projects which we truly believe in; a book is published only when we are fully convinced, even if this does not mean it is perfect;
• working with writers that have long experience in both creating and supervising books, but also and above all in teaching Italian as a second language. People that are continuously up to date and share the same philosophy of committing themselves to little but doing it well.
• spending endless hours reflecting, discussing, exchanging ideas on both writing and with the authors, seeking to foresee any possible doubt or difficulty that our colleagues might have, in other words to being picky and meticulous;
• testing every book before publishing it, and for this we thank those institutions and those colleagues who offer their precious input for this;
• having a founder and director that is both a teacher of Italian to foreigners and a textbook author, who loves dedicating so much time personally following every single book as opposed to taking care of accounts and marketing.