Innovation in Language Learning

The aim of this contribution is to reflect upon and share the ideas developed while I was specializing in German language teaching last year. My training at school focused on the perspectives offered by the use of music and multimediality in foreign, more specifically German, language and literature learning.   

In line with a successfully proven purpose, I mainly aim at showing that, in coordination with traditional teaching systems, original and innovative methods, based on concepts such as «multimediality», «interactivity» and «hypertextuality», are still one of the best paths to success in an attempt to motivate and engage students, thus getting their attention and arousing their interest. In order to show in practice the potentialities underlying a careful intelligent use of these instruments, one of the canonical texts in German literature which are studied at school will be analized. Students often end up ignoring its haunting beauty and dramatic grandeur if these are presented with traditional teaching methods. It is one of Goethe’s Sturm und Drang most famous ballads: Der Erlkönig.     

I am going to introduce a teaching unit where foreign language and literature teaching is mainly carried out through Vertonungen. Along with intertextual and interdisciplinary links, «multimedial, hypertextual and interactive» resources, such as cinematography, the use of videos and flash player footages and other digital media, music (in its rap, classical, rock/metal variants) will therefore be at the core of this Unterrichtseinheit and this study will focus on its beneficial contribution to foreign language learning.

 The use of multimediality, which mainly aims at activating the above mentioned motivational factor and getting students to adopt a critical approach to poetry, will also encourage them to reflect upon how to make use of literature and, more generally, how languages contaminate each other.