Between April and May 2025, the Pre-Texts protocol was implemented in Italian 2A at the University of Cape Town’s School of Languages and Literatures, Faculty of Humanities. This second-year, first-semester course introduces students (at approximately A2 level according to the CEFR) to Italian literature for the first time. Using Jhumpa Lahiri’s In Other Words—a bilingual and accessible text that narrates the author’s journey into Italian—the facilitator designed five Pre-Texts sessions that complemented the course’s broader focus on text typology and writing. The sessions equipped students with tools to engage critically with literature while simultaneously reinforcing their language acquisition process.
Throughout the five sessions, students took part in collaborative activities such as writing poems with selected keywords, composing dialogues, curating “baskets of words,” mapping Venice in connection to the text, and creating short narratives inspired by Lahiri’s dictionary. These exercises encouraged close reading, creativity, and personal reflection, enabling learners to see their own linguistic journeys mirrored in the author’s experience. The result was a deeper engagement with Italian literature, greater enthusiasm for language learning, and a portfolio of creative student work that demonstrated both linguistic development and imaginative expression.
