The DITALS Certificate issued by the University of Siena for Foreigners uses written and oral tests to evaluate theoretical and practical knowledge in the field of teaching Italian to foreigners and guarantees a certain degree of standardization in lieu of a longer training process at university institutions specialized in the training of teachers of Italian as a foreign language.

Applicants
The exam for the DITALS Certificate can be taken by Italian citizens and foreigners who fulfill the following requisites:
– excellent knowledge of the Italian language;
– secondary school diploma;
– university degree in the area of humanities or, in the absence of such, certification that the candidate has taught a minimum of 150 hours of Italian to foreigners;
– certificate of attendance in a language-teaching training course consisting of at least 30 hours of lessons.

Exams and evaluations
The exam consists of sections on theory and practice. The sections on theory are designed to test skills in the areas of linguistics, socio-linguistics, and language instruction. The sections on practice test the abilities to analyze and integrate teaching material, develop teaching material, create lesson units, and create tests in comprehension, production, and evaluation. The exam is composed of four sections and requires five hours for the written exam (sections A, B, and C) and approximately 10 minutes for the oral part (section D):

• Section A: Analysis of didactic materials
• Section B: Construction of didactic materials
• Section C: Knowledge of theory (20 questions)
• Section D: Oral language teaching ability (an audio recording of the candidate, who is asked to confront oral tasks in communication connected to the role of a teacher of Italian to foreigners).