‘La ballata dell’amore cieco’: a case study on the use of songs in Italian language learning

The song ‘La ballata dell’amore cieco (o della vanità)’ (1966), by Italian singer-songwriter Fabrizio De André (1940-1999), offers students opportunities to practise their language skills, stimulate their cultural appreciation, and expand their knowledge of a musical and poetic form (the ballad), while reflecting on the close connection between poetry and dance. Moving from receptive to productive skills, from gist to detail, learning activities are staged over three sessions, where students examine the song’s musical features and lyrics and then produce their own ballads in writing. The paper first discusses the benefits and pitfalls of using songs as a tool to develop linguistic skills and raise cultural awareness. It then describes the learning opportunities offered by De André’s song and concludes with an evaluation of the effectiveness of these activities, examining the potential for further research.

Exploring literary texts to develop students’ creative writing skills: proposed activities for Spanish as a foreign language

Literary texts offer a rich environment for language learning that teachers can exploit to develop not only students’ linguistic (pragmatic, discursive) and cultural skills, but also communication and creative skills. In our study, we have used literature with different writing activities that involved the use of students’ imagination and creativity. In order to develop these skills, which require students’ communicative competence as well as their imagination, we need for them to be able to create the meaningful contexts that lie within fictional stories. The assumption is that, as students become familiar with the characters in the novels, they will be able to recreate situations that make sense for those very stories, generating a shared world in which they could immerse themselves. In that shared world, they would be able to participate in possible dialogues and build stories that could have taken place, thus developing their creative and communicative skills. In this paper, we show how the literature-based learning activities that we have designed following this hypothesis have helped students empathise with characters in novels and imagine fictional worlds. Such new fictional worlds have in turn empowered students to communicate in Spanish in an authentic way, that is, in a way that is similar to that of the characters in the novels.

Cento as a creative writing approach to language learning

Creative writing can be both an effective and attractive English learning activity at university departments where students speak English as a Second Language (ESL). Language skill courses might not be always effective enough in improving learners’ communicative skills and motivating them to learn, particularly when adopting old style grammar-translation based methods. Involving creative writing as a method to teach language can play a significant role in prompting the students to improve their communicative skills. This study proposes employing a creative writing course as a new method to address L2 learners lacking motivation. It particularly relies on using cento poetry as a teaching activity. A cento is a poem made up of lines the learner selects from different poems by one or more poets. The learner consequently has to read several poems, understand their linguistic structures, and grasp the meaning of their vocabulary to begin writing their own work. It is against this background that this study examines the advantages of using cento poetry in ESL classes aiming to enhance language learning.

Introduction

A renewed interest in literature is gradually emerging in the foreign language curriculum as demonstrated in recent studies (e.g. Hall, 2015; Matos, 2012; Paran, 2010; Sell, 2005). The surge of research groups and new online tools on this topic, such as the Litinclass website (https://litinclass.wordpress.com/, Almeida, Puig, & Duarte, 2016) or the Literature in Language Learning and Teaching Research Network (https://lilltresearch.net/home/, Paran & Kirchhoff, 2019) testifies to the growing relevance of this pedagogical approach to the teaching and learning of foreign languages.

French creative theatre in a course for beginners: the case of ‘Finissez vos phrases!’ by Jean Tardieu

This article discusses the benefits of theatrical texts in language courses for beginners. These original, fun, and yet challenging materials help learners develop linguistic and intercultural competencies and transferable skills such as critical thinking, problem-solving, and cooperation. Specifically, this article examines the use of Jean Tardieu’s (2000/1955) short comedy Finissez vos phrases! in a French course for beginners at university level. The particularities of this play are its brevity and the incompleteness of its dialogues. I argue that studying Tardieu’s (2000/1955) comedy allows learners to develop their communication skills by reading the whole play, watching a performance of the play, completing the dialogues, and performing their new version in front of the class. Moreover, Finissez vos phrases! familiarises learners with French conversational conventions and encourages them to think about the effectiveness of language. It also enhances their cooperative skills, lets them express their creativity and, ultimately, offers them a playful approach to learning French.

When the reader becomes the writer; creative writing approaches in the foreign language classroom

Using a contemporary short story by the award-winning German writer Roman Ehrlich as a case study, in this paper we will offer ideas for engaging students at CEFR (Common European Framework of Reference for languages) B1+ and B2 level in German in reading as well as encouraging them in creative writing tasks through formative assessment and coursework. More specifically, we will argue that literature in the classroom is a means of practising reading comprehension. This opens up opportunities for students to create their own literary texts, with receptive skills becoming productive skills. Introducing two projects we carried out with students in their first and second years at the University of Liverpool as examples, we will discuss process and practice. We will show how reading and writing projects can be linked to aspects of authentic assessment and its forms. We are then going to explore the possibilities for further embedding literary assessments in coursework, highlighting their benefits and challenges, including the process of publishing them on a student-led WordPress site.

Developing soft skills with micro-fiction: a close-reading experience

Micro-contos, or micro-fiction, are very short and concise literary texts that require close-reading and inference from the reader. In this case study, I will describe how I have used these widely available texts in a Portuguese A2/B1 language module to develop analytical and other soft skills. I will demonstrate how this activity meets Tomlinson’s (2011) universal principles for materials development in language teaching, namely, exposing learners to meaningful input highlighting linguistic features as well as enabling learners to engage affectively and cognitively in the learning experience. Finally, I will give details of how it has been received by students.

Transnational perspectives in the Italian language class: the uses of non-native literature to develop intercultural competence

This paper explores how a transnational approach to university language classes may help develop students’ intercultural competence. Researchers have shown that the integration of literature in the language class has the potential to raise intercultural competence (Deardorff, 2006), especially when migrant and travel literatures are used (Matos, 2012, Paran, 2008). I present an empirical case study of the use of migrant literature in Italian in a Learning Unit (LU) for final-year undergraduate students of Italian language – Common European Framework of Reference for languages (CEFR) C1/C2 (Council of Europe, 2001). After describing the context of the LU, I explain the rationale behind its design, outline its contents, and observe that the LU helps students to improve all canonical linguistic skills as well as intercultural abilities.

Literature in language learning in the UK context: from current A-levels to university

The aim of this paper is to look at the impact of recent reforms to the General Certificate of Secondary Education (GCSE) and Advanced Subsidiary (AS) curriculum in the UK, which included the teaching of literature in the language classroom in an attempt to make the study of languages more attractive and to better prepare students for university. The delivery of the new GCSEs and A-Levels has served to highlight new challenges, which are hampering the intended purpose of the reforms: language GCSEs and A-Levels are perceived as more difficult than other subjects and severe grading has been confirmed. Moreover, most teachers do not view the compulsory literature element positively. Conversely, academic studies confirm the value of literature in the study of languages and various initiatives demonstrate the attractiveness and effectiveness of literature in terms of increasing motivation and enhancing language skills. In this paper, we suggest some final proposals to improve this situation.

Literature, challenge, and mediation in 21st century language learning

New directions in language learning and teaching are evident today. Students bring transnational, multicultural, multilingual, and digitally mediated experiences and identities into classrooms still sometimes too much modelled on outdated one-language-one-culture-one nation ideologies. Literature’s value in these new circumstances is to challenge readers to independent interpretations, learning, and creativity, with refreshed understandings of what language, culture or indeed literature might be. In this paper I review some relevant recent interventions into the foreign language education field, including a reference to the Council of Europe’s (2018) Companion . I then give a brief example from my own use of a literary text in China.