Lilian Feitosa & Sarah Annunziato - Department of Spanish, Italian, and Portuguese

Can Your Inner Child Help You Learn Another Language? Using Children's Books and Media in Portuguese and Italian Courses

Lilian Feitosa and Sarah Annunziato have a common research and pedagogical interest: children's and young adult literature and media. In this presentation, they will share how they use children's books and media to help them teach Portuguese and Italian language and culture in several of their classes. Lilian uses primarily various children's books, Brazilian, but also classic American (such as If You Give a Mouse a Cookie) to work on grammatical concepts, and cultural aspects (such as ethnic stereotypes and young people's struggles with racial issues in an advanced culture class). In Italian classes, Sarah uses children's songs to improve aural skills and incorporates poems and short stories for younger readers to reinforce grammar topics. Students also practice writing by creating their own children's stories using Gianni Rodari's concept of the binomio fantastico, as described in La grammatica della fantasia.