Uncategorized
December 11, 2009
The winner of the Latin Grammy for Mejor Nuevo Artista this year, and nominated in a similar category for Premio Lo Nuestro 2010, is a blond, dimpled native of D.F. named Alexander Acha. One of his most popular tunes is the song “Te Amo.” I had to tell my students to give him a chance […]
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December 7, 2009
Switch to a communicative set-up
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How is your classroom laid out? Is it conducive to communicative teaching and acquisition? Recently my principal came back from a visit to another school and showed me a picture (on his iPhone of course) of a classroom that made him think of me. The teacher had put several tables together and then cut a […]
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November 30, 2009
In the world language classroom, we are not just teaching language. Language as a means of communication by its very nature enables us to touch our world in different ways. That’s why I say all the time that a major part of our responsibility is to help our students become world citizens by keeping them […]
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November 21, 2009
A case for free-topic blogging
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I despise traditional homework. I think in language acquisition, it doesn’t help. If you want kids to learn to drill conjugations, give them worksheets, but otherwise, keep ALL your assignments and assessment communicative. For me, this means that most of what I could ask them to do at home, they’ll get frustrated doing on their […]
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November 19, 2009
It’s 19 de noviembre!
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http://media.imeem.com/m/X1eVzvIJMO/aus=false/ 19 De Noviembre – Carlos Vives Take advantage of today’s date to play Carlos Vives’ song 19 de noviembre. Here are some ways to use it: Listening: -See if they can hear the date at the beginning without seeing it (Spanish 1). Culture: -Tell students to look under “Historia” in this article to see […]
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November 17, 2009
My students are insanely excited about the release of Camila’s sophomore album. Several of them can sing “Solo para ti” or “Coleccionista de canciones” or “Abrázame” from memory. The first single from the album, “Mientes,” will be released next week on the 24th. Meanwhile, you can hear the whole amazing song on their YouTube channel […]
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November 11, 2009
A case for pleasure reading
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Stephen Krashen has done a ton of research on what he calls Free Voluntary Reading. Catch up on his research by checking it out on his website. Basically, the premise is that kids learn more (and language learners acquire more vocabulary) when reading at an appropriate leve and something that is pleasurable to them. I […]
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November 10, 2009
November seems to be kind of a popular topic for songs. Celebrate this oddity by playing a couple of songs, starting with Noviembre sin ti by Reik, winners of this year’s Latin Grammy for best albúm pop vocal grupo o duo. The things I like to point out in this song are: –weather/environment vocabulary –nosotros […]
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November 7, 2009
Zachary Jones’s “Clozeline”
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Don’t re-invent the wheel-often there are magically appealing and effective activities out there on the web if you just know where to look. I just got a link over Twitter to Zachary Jones‘s post about his activity called “Clozeline.” He’s got cloze quizzes to a whole bunch of songs, with grammatical topics. Enjoy!
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November 4, 2009
The word ojalá finds its roots in Arabic, meaning “May allah grant that.” In Spanish it’s always followed by subjunctive, and here are two songs to help work with that. The first is with present, Ojalá que llueva café, by Juan Luis Guerra. It’s one of those songs that can lead you in a hundred different […]
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November 4, 2009
A song just for @mamitati
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This is a special post out to Tati, amazing bilingual mami blogger at WannaJugarWithMigo. I caught this song just the other day and I LOVE it! It’s a Christian song (I teach at a Christian school). Well, most of my high-schoolers were not as impressed as I was, but it’ll be fun to teach to […]
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October 30, 2009
You can’t buy this in a textbook
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There are so many reasons to dislike conventional world language curriculum; my #1 is that the books are out of date before they go to press. So your students are reading about how there hasn’t been a successful coup d’etat in Latin America since the end of the Cold War, and meanwhile Micheletti and the […]
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