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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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January 13, 2009
An example of vocab
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Here’s an example of how I present my vocab. Here are the first three weeks of vocab for Spanish 1 this semester. I never give more than 15 phrases per week, and I don’t like giving even that much, but in Spanish 1 especially it’s hard to avoid that–they just flat out need the vocabulary. […]
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January 13, 2009
Internet scavenger hunts
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I’m constantly looking for communicative, interesting tasks for my students to either create or complete. My Spanish 2 project for the 3rd quarter is an internet scavenger-hunt-type worksheet. Students choose a Spanish-language website and then create a series of questions for another student to complete. The questions can involve playing a game, listening to music, […]
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January 13, 2009
A Spanish 2 story test
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I’ve been out for a while–Christmas was a whirlwind, and then I landed in the hospital for 5 days with a severe infection. The baby weathered it better than I did, but I finally feel like I’m recovering. Enough to get back to the blogosphere anyway! In any case, here’s the story test I gave […]
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December 29, 2008
Videos from Jesús Adrian Romero
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One of the nominees this year for the Latin Grammy for best Christian album (Spanish language) was Jesús Adrian Romero. I think he’s my new favorite Spanish-language Christian singer (especially since I found out Marcos Witt is pastoring the Spanish church at Joel Osteen’s church, but that’s an entirely different story). Anyway, he has four […]
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December 29, 2008
Alex Campos’s YouTube channel
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Alex Campos is, it appears to me, a rising star in the contemporary Christian Spanish music scene, and behold–he has his own YouTube channel. The best thing about his videos is that they’re not all music. He’ll sometimes post a video greeting from wherever he’s doing a concert these days. Greetings always contain at least […]
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December 22, 2008
A story test
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My assessment has recently shaped up to be that I have 5 test grades in each quarter. We have a high school policy that except in math, tests form 50% of the student’s grade, and daily grades the other 50%. So test grades are pretty important, and I’ve been accused of not having enough tests […]
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December 16, 2008
A video for Navidad
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I’ve been MIA a bit lately–sick and in the finals crunch at school–but I did want to post this video. It’s Ana Cristina singing on the Telemundo show. The song isn’t great (I hope she’s better on CD than she is live) but the Spanish leading up to it is good. Even beginners should be […]
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December 5, 2008
Great new song for subjunctive
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I just got this new song, La frase tonta de la semana, by the group La 5a Estación. The woman in the middle does pretty much all the vocals, and the guys play the guitar. The video is pretty good, though not the most interesting in the world. (She likes to change outfits a lot […]
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December 5, 2008
¡Nueva música!
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I bought some new songs yesterday, and mostly they’re really good: Abrázame by Camila No me hagas sufrir by Manny Manuel La copa de la vida by Ricky Martin Aguita de tu boca by Amaury Gutierrez No creo en el jamás by Juanes Pasos de gigantes by Bacilos La frase tonta de la semana by […]
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December 5, 2008
A fantastic blog post
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One of my best Spanish 3 students –he or another girl will probably win the department Spanish award this year– forgot to post his blog this week, and so he wrote it in class today and turned it in for me to post for him. It’s a late grade of course, but wow–I watched him […]
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