17 Locations and Landscapes: Travel in the Museum
Chantelle Warner
Level:
Beginning/Intermediate
Keywords:
description ⧫ adjectives ⧫ travel ⧫ landscapes ⧫ geography
Summary:
This multi-day lesson builds on a familiar thematic unit in many language-culture curricula–travel–curricula, by inviting students to imagine travel artistic renderings of spaces and places and by engaging them with a related genre, the travel guide (Reiseführer). On day 1, students are introduced to the genre of travel guide and more specifically to the individual blurbs contained within, which highlight a particular place one might want to visit, in this case focussing on art museums, mural collections, statue gardens, or other places featuring artworks that convey something about the identity of the location, its history, or its inhabitants. They are then asked to analyze and reflect on the linguistic and visual design choices that make up these texts, based on models provided to them. This expanded set of resources then supports them in the final task on day three.
On Day 2 students will go to a local museum or artistic locale, featuring place-based works of art. For example, the sample lesson was originally developed for students in Tucson and on the second day students visited the University of Arizona Museum of Art. In some semesters, students were able to view an exhibit of relevance to the lesson, such as The Myth and the Mirror. In other semesters, students chose from regular works of the collection, which included depictions of Arizona’s and Germany’s landscapes. In small groups, students select one artwork to focus on, before completing a series of tasks that invite them to first imagine the depicted landscape as a place they might visit and then to describe the place to an imagined reader, emphasizing the feelings it evokes in them. Although the lesson uses Arizona and Tucson as examples, the lesson could easily be modified to work in a different location.
Finally, on Day 3, students draw from the repertoire of meaning making resources they have gathered over the first two days of the lesson to design a travel guide blurb for the place they have visited, which highlights the work of art they chose. Through this final task, students are put in the role of authors and cultural mediators, who have to consider what aspects of local spaces might be interesting and worthwhile.
Learning objectives:
- Can read short, coherent travel brochures and write independently.
- Can recognize and compare the geographical and climatic differences between Germany and Arizona (or a different location);
- Can summarize relevant information of a location, e.g., scenery, climate, tourist attractions;
- Can, with the aid of functional texts and visual arts, reflect on typical travel destinations and their cultural implications.
DAY 1: Read and analyze the travel guide
Conceptualizing Travel Guides
This first set of activities is designed to (re-)familiarize learners with the genre of tr