Innovation in Language Learning

This paper is the result of almost ten years of experience teaching Italian Language and Culture to Colombian students. Most of them have decided to learn Italian for the joy of getting to know one of the oldest Romance languages in the world.

In a first stage, a traditional teaching approach was implemented. However, some students were not able to understand the topics. Then, we tried a cultural approach, but students didn't have the necessary linguistic knowledge to interact with each other. Therefore, they were not able to communicate their ideas in the foreign language. Finally, we started working with games. As a result, we managed to articulate linguistic and communicative competences through cultural information from Italy as fundamental elements to be integrated in the metholodogy.

The main objectives of the course are: a) to raise awareness of the importance of language levels to strengthen communicative competence, b) to promote self-learning and collaborative learning through playing, c) to approach Italian language and culture through games. 

Each lesson is a game experience aiming to articulate one or several language levels with some cultural aspects. In the first part of the course, the teacher designs games and introduces linguistic and cultural objectives. Then, students assume the task of designing games with the supervision of the teacher. The assumption here is that student's brain work differently when studying and playing. Students have the expectation of playing on a regular basis with games as learning vehicles, which enables them to learn along the process.

In this paper, a number of games used in the course will be presented. They all have proved to be very useful and significant for teaching and learning purposes.