Grimm’s fairy tales as an interface between literature, language and culture: a literary enrichment for holistic (German) language learning at university level

Abstract

The educational value of fairy tales has already been recognised by the Brothers Grimm themselves, and by the end of the 19th century, their fairy tales had been introduced into school lessons in Germany, where they have remained ever since. In the 1980s, they became even more popular in education and were soon also found to be useful for teaching German as a foreign language (GFL). Fairy tales serve as an interface between literature, language, and culture, and their integration into language teaching significantly expands the didactic repertoire. This paper will explore the potential of fairy tales for teaching university students of German and, by providing concrete examples from practice, will demonstrate how even small fairy tale tasks can facilitate holistic learning, owing to the wide range of applications in the language classroom, from creative writing to grammar revision.