Three methodological "hypotheses" elaborated by the "Centre interuniversitaire de recherche pour le recyclage des maitres d'italien" are presented here. These hypotheses came from three teams of teachers working from different perspectives on sets of lessons for beginners of all ages. Each team's operative assumptions, type of text, guiding principles, presentation and use of the texts and activities are discussed and illustrated with examples in Italian. The objective of the first team was to train beginning students to understand elementary Italian and to answer short questions in the language about simple situations suggested by a prepared text. The second team's desire to motivate students led to their choice of an animated cartoon as the basic text. Each lesson comprised six points: the presentation, descriptive text, grammar, structure exercises, vocabulary and conversation. The third group chose a film because this medium seems to allow for more active communication. An evaluation, including specific positive and negative criticisms of each approach and an indication of future perspectives, concludes the paper. (AMH)