The Ginger Marcus Foreign Language Learning Speaker Series
Performance in realistic cultural contexts is integral to language learning if we assume that the learner’s essential goal is to become a contributing person in the community that uses that language.
With this argument in mind, I suggest using video clips as a way to enhance that learning experience.
The experience of performances builds personal memories of that experience, what Roger Schank calls stories. Developing stories of participation in a new culture is both thrilling and rewarding becaus we build multiple personae through these stories. If our identity is deeply internal and basic to our being, our personae— aspects of ourselves that we bring to specific performances—give us the ability to flexibly perform in different circles of socialization. Through socialization, we each build multiple personae. Performance is a situated event that is defined by linguistic and physical acts as well as specific elements of context. Videos of live performances offer opportunities to view performance and extract those performance-defining elements. They serve as powerful tools for learning to perform, if learners pay conscious attention to the elements of The Ginger Marcus Foreign Language Learning Speaker Series at Washington University is sponsored by the Department of Comparative Literature and Thought; the Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures; the Department of Jewish, Islamic, and Near Eastern performance depicted.
I will use examples of video clips to demonstrate the activity I call “Performance Watching.”
