ABSTRACT
Spoken word is live poetry that sets in motion a large communication system of the poets, first with themselves, and later with their audience. The poetry slam is an artistic, cultural, and social movement, which makes of poetry a living spectacle that fully engages those involved in it. Poetry touches our senses, our intellect, and our imagination. It directly stimulates our emotions and transforms us. That is why oral poetry has a vital role to play in an academic curriculum in general and in a language class in particular. Integrating into the program of Spanish classes activities related to the reading, writing, and staging of poetry allows students to work with the language in an innovative way, and offers students an original tool through which they can express their emotions, think critically, engage in an introspective journey of the self, and build bonds with their peers. It also gives them a chance to develop a new approach to the foreign language while putting into practice all four language skills. Indeed, students not only learn the language - its lexical wealth, its grammar, its codes, its standards, and its prosody - but they learn it as an instrument of personal expression and communication that is relevant to them. As such, spoken word is an excellent pedagogical tool, as it changes the students’ relationship with the language. By creating and performing their own texts, they embark on a personal journey through the language and become their own negotiators in their language acquisition. They get personally involved and develop active agency over their learning. This paper describes the process of the L2 acquisition through spoken word. This process is based on classes and workshops taught in college settings, at the intermediate level and above.
