Teaching Babylon Berlin: Language and Culture Through a Hit TV Series

Abstract

Film courses are now standard offerings in collegiate world language programs, but instructors have only begun to consider the unique benefits of teaching a television series to engage language learners in meaningful communication. As series have become the entertainment of choice for today's students, educators should consider the opportunities in developing course materials around extensive viewing tasks. Following a literacy-based approach, this article presents an intermediate language course designed around the hit German-language TV series Babylon Berlin (Sky/ARD 2017-present). Extensive viewing can help students develop critical interpretative skills and visual literacy while also addressing the need to target students' listening skills. This article situates this course within research on teaching with film and television and highlights how teaching with a series can provide rich cultural content as a backbone for course design that motivates intermediate learners to learn more about interwar history, culture, and politics. The article also offers reflections on the benefits and challenges of using television as a primary text and provides sample classroom activities, assignments, and assessments.