124083 VK BEd 08a.3: VK Literature for Language Teachers (2021W)

Lyric texts are short, intense, memorable and fun – and thus ideal for use in the foreign language classroom. Adding to its long and impressive history, poetry in recent years has developed exciting new forms of lyric expression (spoken word, instapoetry, computer poetry, rap, etc.), winning the genre an enthusiastic young readership and giving it a modern, popular appeal.

In this course, we will explore the didactic potential of this vibrant genre, looking at how we can make the most of poetry’s radical subjectivity and emotional intensity, its alluring rhythm, innovative language and explorative thought in the literature classroom. Whether it is Patience Agbabi’s performance poetry on issues of racial and gender-related identity, Michael Rosen’s children’s poetry on bullying, or Wilfred Owen’s harrowing vignettes of World War I, lyric texts need few words to convey to us the essence of an experience which would otherwise remain foreign and inaccessible.

One focus of our VK will be placed firmly on the use of poetry as a means to engage with other identities and ways of seeing, providing learners with opportunities to develop empathy and enhance their cultural competence. Using, amongst other examples, Amanda Gorman’s inaugural poem “The Hill We Climb” (2021), we will employ poetry as a means to engage learners’ critical thinking skills and advance their historical and political awareness. Students will work with poetry’s physical properties (by reciting, rapping, singing, shouting, and acting out poetry), and tasks will feature a variety of lyric prompts to invite learners to be linguistically creative and produce lyric texts of their own.

In an extensive introductory section, students will be given tools for a pragmatic literary analysis suitable for use at school. There will be ample information including several practice tasks on how to write this course’s proseminar/BEd-paper.