Uncategorized
July 14, 2009
Fonseca is a fun singer, another Colombian (they can seriously turn out some people with rhythm, eh?) with some great songs for teaching. Of course our favorite in my class is the ‘dancing firemen song’ “Hace tiempo,” which I blogged about here, but another one I like to use is “Te mando flores”, with its […]
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June 30, 2009
A song for your hip-hop fans
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David Bisbal collaborated with reggaetón stars Wisin & Yandel on a unity-themed song called Torre de Babel. You can see the official music video here. Also, with reggaetón you never know, but I read through the lyrics and didn’t see anything offensive, but you might want to take a look because while I’m familiar with most […]
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June 29, 2009
Developing world citizens
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With all the amazing things popping up on the internet, there’s no excuse not to help our students become educated world citizens by keeping them pondering important events in the Spanish-speaking world. E.g. last year’s rescue of Betancourt and the other hostages was a monumental shift in the situation between FARC and Uribe and dominated […]
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June 19, 2009
Aquí Estoy Yo: video oficial
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The fabulous group of guys I wrote about two posts down has their official music video out: Aquí Estoy Yo on universalmusicgroup’s YouTube channel Add to that Universal’s “behind the scenes” video including interviews and you’ve got a solid class’s worth of material. All the guys are from different countries and their accents show it […]
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June 19, 2009
A new group on my radar
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Yesterday I was watching the Today Show (while feeding Zoe, our morning ritual) and caught a segment on a group I never heard of but who apparently won a grammy. They’re called Ozomatli and they sing a lot in English, some in Spanglish, and some in Spanish. I found this song on YouTube: La Gallina […]
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June 8, 2009
Wow, what a hiatus! I definitely didn’t intend to be absent that long. But I have a good reason. Two weeks before the end of school–what timing, Zoe! The last month of my pregnancy it was crazy hard just to get up and go to school in the morning–and I was in assignment overdrive, trying […]
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April 6, 2009
As I wrote in this post, No Me Doy por Vencido by Luis Fonsi is a recent favorite of mine, and Fonsi himself is quickly climbing my list of faves, particularly because of how much he loves his wife and is devoted to her, and refuses to fall into the seductive/hunter/lust-after-these-other-bellezas trap often laid for […]
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April 6, 2009
The heroes speak Español
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Team USA continued its amazing run on the road to the 2010 World Cup by defeating Trinidad & Tobago last week in Nashville (one of my students went–I’m so jealous!). Of course, Univisión carried the highlights, including brief clips of 3 of the team’s stars, including Landon Donovan, speaking Spanish. Whatever it takes to convince […]
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April 6, 2009
In Spanish 3 these days we’re looking at the por/para contrasts and for this I like to use two songs that nicely illustrate this unique difference. The first is Solo por ti by Josh Groban. Yes, some students won’t like it because he is a classical singer, but it’s a beautiful song. Incidentally, also an […]
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April 6, 2009
Useless grammar I used to teach
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There are a couple of grammar issues I used to teach and I’ve since decided such explicit instruction on these points is a waste of time. By this, I mean that given the time we have with our students, and what they’re really capable of using in fluent speech/writing, explaining the grammatical terms and issues […]
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April 2, 2009
Adding some links–check ’em out
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I added some links to my ‘communicative tools’ and ‘communicative bloggers’ sections. Check out Wanna Jugar with Migo, a fabulous blog by a mom & grandmother who are bringing up their kids/grandkids bilingual. (I had a professor who’d go crazy analyzing that codeswitching, lol.) The links and tools and ideas people come up with amaze […]
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March 22, 2009
Negative commands + culture
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Here’s a short videoclip of Hugo Chávez continuing his usual rhetoric, now against President Obama, lest anyone think there would be any change in his behavior. It’s no secret in my classes that I’m no fan of Chávez (or Obama for that matter, but I digress). Fortunately he provides us with lots of fodder for […]
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