This presentation highlights Music in the Italian Language Classroom as a Communicative and Cultural tool that can be used to help students Connect and Compare across Communities in meaningful, task-based, goal-oriented ways.  Through the use of carefully selected songs, presented and supported in pedagogically sound ways, students are given the opportunity to communicate in the interpersonal, interpretive, and presentational modes.  As they steadily move from lower to higher-order thinking, students reach learning objectives that allow them to progress through proficiency levels in the target language and become better acquainted with the target culture while
getting to know and appreciate music in the language they are studying.  The sample modules and student work I will present can be used as innovative strategies for teaching Italian culture at the high school level, touching on many of six AP themes, and the university level, leading students to competency while developing the 5 ACTFL Cs.  My activities range from visual approaches to vocabulary-building, to Blog and Wiki entries, to the production of original student music and videos. 

Lillyrose Veneziano Broccia, PhD
Co-Director of the Italian Language Program
Coordinator of Intermediate Italian
Department of Romance Languages
University of Pennsylvania

lillyros@sas.upenn.edu

Paper presented at the Teaching Italian Culture Conference Georgetown University, Washington D.C. Saturday, October 19, 2013