Out of the Class and into the Gallery: Teaching Spanish through Fine Arts

Abstract

This paper explores the role of art galleries in the Spanish program at the University of Melbourne, Australia, illustrating how teaching language via artworks opens up particular modes of teaching that integrate language and content while increasing student motivation. The integration of culture and language is particularly challenging in the case of beginning level students, yet visual art has provided particularly fruitful, given that art bypasses linguistics. Visual arts in language instruction has already been discussed in terms of student motivation (Bevilacqua Martello 2017). I discuss student motivation in relation to our advanced level students who work with the National Gallery of Victoria’s (NGV’s) education team to design a program tailored to beginners students, acting as teachers or guides for the students during the gallery visit.