Student productions of Early Modern texts are becoming more frequent, yet their impacts have not been assessed in an educational context that takes into consideration both the literary themes representative of the era, and the process of second language acquisition. This special panel seeks to examine how instructors in secondary schools through college use Early Modern Iberian literature to encourage students to consider topics such as being human, collectivity, and individuality as they progress in their language acquisition. This panel brings together experienced instructors from different learning and teaching environments and aims to serve as a platform where educators can share ideas on how to improve student engagement and interaction with the texts, as well as to discuss instructional and assessment techniques and materials they found effective in their practice.
Rationale:
The goal of the session is to examine the impact teaching Early Modern Iberian literature could have on the development of critical thinking skills, cross-cultural competence, and language acquisition, as well as to workshop ideas for how to effectively teach and assess literature in various contexts and levels. The panel hopes to inspire collaboration between the literature and second language acquisition professionals in their quest to educate future generations of students and support world languages programs overall. Bridget Yaden, the President of ACTFL, will be co-chairing this session with Carmela Mattza. Together, they will moderate the discussion and tease out the many ways studying literature can assist in language acquisition as well as prepare students for a life in a multicultural ever-shrinking world.
Relationship to scholarship:
This session will feature panelists with expertise and training in the Early Modern Iberian literature, Acting and Performance, and Second Language Acquisition. Although at different points in their career, with different focal points, and at different types of institutions, each of them has already made contributions to the field and the teaching profession. This session, however, will provide them with an opportunity to bring their ideas to a bigger audience, and show how teaching literature can promote critical thinking, cross-cultural competence, and second language acquisition. Participants will share their expertise starting with a presentation on Early Modern Iberian sonnets and second language acquisition in a secondary classroom presented by Anita Damjanovic; overcoming fear and organically increasing both cultural and linguistic competence through strategic use of social media presented by Carmen Granda; and finally, Robert Turner and Darlene Farabee will present on how staging classical texts allow students to discover layers of meaning through the movement of actors, costume choice, music, etc. as well as to consider how the interplay of politics, gender among others in the text affect or not their representation.
Anita Damjanovic will share how, by emphasizing imagery in sonnets, she assists students in visualizing the verses and starting to see poetry as a painting in words. She will describe how by transcribing the verses into drawings, and then describing those drawings in their own words, the verses become more accessible to students unaccustomed to reading sonnets. This demystifying of poetry leads to higher engagement in what is typically considered an arduous task. Moreover, playing a part of a “poetry detective,” students draw the poet’s words, or the clues, and identify the connections and transitions between verses by relying on visual imagery, arriving to the theme faster and via a more engaging and collaborative process. By transforming the classroom into a collaborative environment where students interpret, draw, paraphrase and present their poetry analyses, Damjanovic’s presentation will show how to promote interpretive, interpersonal and presentational modes of communication which, in turn, can result in a growth in linguistic and cultural competencies.
Carmen Granda will demonstrate how she helps students overcome their fear of archaic language and themes in Spanish Golden Age texts by connecting literary interpretation to students’ own experiences via Instagram. Her goal is to show how in response to an assigned hashtag in relation to a specific Golden Age text, students connect an idea or thought by creating a digital visual representation (photo) and share it through social media. With this activity, students use critical thinking skills to make connections between photo and text, fulfilling ACTFL’s three modes of communication: interpersonal, interpretive, and presentational. Granda’s presentation will show how through Instagram, teachers can transform a student’s experience, redefining a traditional task of interpretation, discussion, and presentation to create a novel, collaborative, and dynamic literature classroom.
Robert L. Turner III and Darlene Farabee will outline the objectives, process, and outcomes from their team-taught World Drama 499, in which the faculty stressed dramaturgy, performance, and high school outreach as mutually reinforcing learning activities. The faculty required students to study, stage and perform scenes from the Early Modern Transatlantic (+) tradition. Vermillion High School students and teachers from AP Literature, German III, Spanish III, and Spanish II enjoyed scenes from Corneille’s Le Cid, Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz’s Los empeños de una casa, Schiller’s Wallensteins Tod, and Shakespeare’s Hamlet. The act of staging highlights for students and spectators how the live performance of a play adds layers of meaning through the movement of actors, costume choice, set design, makeup, music, etc. Students were asked to consider how does drama negotiate representations of political and royal power, and how are representations of gender altered through the corporeality of actors’ bodies, among other topics. In addition to the staging and performance of scenes, college dramaturgs prepared introductory handouts for both students and teachers. Following the performance, university and high school students shared their reasons for studying foreign languages, literatures, and drama. Based on the feedback from both the high school and college students, this active, embodied, shared interpretation yielded impressive and meaningful outcomes.
Time Organization
Each presentation will be delivered in no more than 18 minutes. Co-presenters will present their work in an equal time (9 minutes). The remaining 15 or 20 minutes are reserved for the co-chairs to briefly comment on the presentations and moderate the resulting discussion.