Integration of arts into second language curriculum from a Kantian perspective

Abstract

Abstract This paper explores the benefits of incorporating arts in second language (L2) learning from a Kantian approach. From a Kantian perspective, the use of arts in L2 learning enhances learners’ motivation and engagement in their language learning by focusing on learners’ subjective meanings, lowering the burden of cognition of employing categories for reasoning, lowering learners’ instrumentalism in their language learning through a sense of disinterestedness, allowing a free play between imagination and understanding, providing learners with a purposiveness of form which enhances learners’ cognitive capacity, allowing learners to achieve universal assent, and enhancing learners’ morality. The proposed pedagogical suggestions based on the above benefits are emphasizing the subjective meanings of learners, emphasizing the non-reasoning aspect in arts integration in L2 teaching, highlighting the internal rewards of artistic activities learners engaged in the language classroom, using poetry for the enhancement of imagination, using natural beauty and diverse arts forms, using interactivity, and using arts of different cultures and historical eras in L2 teaching.