From creative adaption to critical framing: Dramatic transformations across the foreign language classroom

Abstract

This chapter considers the cognitive and affective benefits, as well as the practical considerations, of integrating dramatic arts in the foreign language curriculum. How can arts integration motivate student learning, and how can we motivate graduate student instructors, in turn, to become more creative language instructors? To what extent can arts integration strengthen curricular goals and connect language to higher-level thinking skills? Drawing on documented pedagogical initiatives, as well as on research on genre-based approaches to curricular design, this chapter demonstrates how a single dramatic text can be used and reused, adopted and adapted at different levels of the curriculum, through intertextuality, linguistic creativity, and performance. It is at this intersection that graduate students can be guided better in the task of connecting foreign-language instruction to their background in literary and cultural studies. This challenge is particularly pertinent for the professionalization of graduate students who, we hope, will enter the profession in a post-two-tiered system that regards the acquisition of language, content, and analytical skills as a seamless whole.