Using Art to Teach Spanish in the High School Classroom

This study aims to answer the following research question: how can we promote communicative competence and facilitate the creation of more meaningful connections for high school students by using art as the medium to teach Spanish? A unit of contextualized instruction is provided that focuses on promoting communicative competence and facilitating the creation of more meaningful connections through the use of art. Individual lessons were crafted to abide by current language acquisition theories and research, in addition to providing a cultural context and an overarching central question that promotes student inquiry and personal connections. The author concludes that this unit is designed to promote communicative competence in the target language by providing consistent instruction in the context of a widely accessible topic, such as art. She further suggests modification of the unit to serve as an outline for different languages and ability levels