Uncategorized
February 10, 2009
A good story for ‘tiene’
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Usborne books has a series of books that are good to read when practicing tiene. I bought a couple to use with my baby–one is Este no es mi osito and the other is Este no es mi dinosaurio. They’re touch ‘n feel board books, but they work fine in a classroom too! The things […]
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February 9, 2009
There’s a really odd technopop group out of Argentina that became somewhat a suprise hit in the last two years. The band is called Miranda! and I use one of their songs–once a year only in Spanish 2 and 3–for ‘we’ commands. I really don’t like technopop, and this song gets on my nerves like […]
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February 9, 2009
A story for demonstratives
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I’ve come up with a story that in both Spanish 1 and 2 has worked really well with teaching demonstratives. We’ve worked with those quite a bit for the past couple of weeks, and I’ve been amazed at how fast my students have become consistent and proficient at using them. Side note: A couple of […]
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February 9, 2009
Rules in a communicative class
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What rules should you have in your class if you want it to be communicative? What if you’re teaching using TPRS? In my class, these are my rules: 1.) Watch. 2.) Listen. 3.) Tell me when you don’t understand (even if it’s a hand signal, which in my class is an X made with your […]
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February 9, 2009
Cause and effect
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A few thoughts on what we shouldn’t do, in my opinion: If you don’t want your students to translate in their heads when they speak… DON’T include translation in your assessment. EVER. Real translation/interpretation is a very advanced skill and will come with time anyway. If you don’t want your students to run through a […]
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February 6, 2009
Relating everything to English
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Cross-linguistic transfer, the problem of a learner’s native language interfering with the one being learned, is a big enough issue without us as teachers compounding it by constantly relating things to English. For example, giving students ways to remember words by relating them to English is not always a smart idea, in my opinion. I […]
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February 3, 2009
A correction on La Frase Tonta
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For my commentary on the song “La frase tonta de la semana,” look here. Sometimes the music videos I link to are a violation of copyright. Sorry ’bout that–I’m a real stickler for copyright law. Just ask my students how often I tell them I won’t burn music for them and I disapprove of linewire […]
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February 3, 2009
It greatly bothers me how history books, history classes, and the daily news sources largely ignore Latin America. Car bombings and such in Iraq make headline news all the time because we’re involved and that somehow makes them more important than such things that have become commonplace in Colombia because of a more than 40-year […]
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February 3, 2009
A project based on motivation
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Here in Kentucky we’re still digging out from last week’s ice storm. Yesterday I was able to get online for the first time in a week, so today, it’s back to blogging! If you’ve taught from a textbook for very long, you’ve found that they’re just not motivating to students who aren’t already self-motivated, and […]
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January 22, 2009
“How much is estuvo de pie?”
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One of my students cracked me up this morning. I haven’t laughed so hard in a while! We were doing this story where the students were at a circus with a monito and Garfield and no estuvieron de pie. One of the students, Karyssa, was the vendedora, estuvo de pie, y vendía carne de res, […]
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January 20, 2009
One more song for subjunctive
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There’s another song that’s great for so many reasons–by far one of my students’ favorites: La llave de mi corazón by Juan Luis Guerra. His music and lyrics are positive and upbeat and the codeswitching (mixing languages) fascinates my students, who often enter my class thinking bilingualism is weird and there aren’t any cool people […]
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January 15, 2009
A couple more subjunctive songs
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Someone landed on my blog a little while ago by searching for good subjunctive songs, so I thought I’d post a couple more I’ve run across. One is the song “Todo Cambió,” the title track to Camila’s debut CD. That’s them in the photo. The subjunctive is following the word antes for something in the […]
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