Imparare le lingue al museo: spunti, esperienze e riflessioni

Abstract

Language learning in a museum presents several opportunities. In fact, museums offer an almost inexhaustible variety of stimulating and cultural topics and materials which constitute a pleasant alternative to certain repetitive and superficial contents of some language courses on the one hand, and on the other hand to all those all too functional approaches which see language-acquisition exclusively from the perspective of usefulness, be it work, study or travel.

In this contribution I aim to describe different settings of museum didactics (tandem learning, a language course, an activity at the Self-Access Centre, an online offer), partly based on studies in the field of didactics "outside the classroom", but above all on my personal experiences as a teacher, and also as a learner. I will complete my account by enumerating some common traits of forms of language learning outside the classroom, particularly those practised in a museum context.