songs
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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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
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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March 9, 2009
Hey, my title rhymes. 😀 Luis Fonsi has a new(ish) song out that actually hit the Billboard Top 100. It’s kind of slow but very catchy. The song is called No Me Doy Por Vencido, and incidentally the video is pretty good too (and 100% legal, yay!). In one part in the chorus, the verb […]
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February 13, 2009
One of my problems with standard curriculum is they can’t provide enough variety in activities focused on one issue. They try, I’ll give the writers credit for that, but there are only so many textbook/workbook exercises you can design to elicit subjunctive for doubt. And really, do we believe that those cheesy textbook videos offer […]
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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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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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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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November 28, 2008
Two of my favorite groups personally are the Mexican trio Camila and their compatriot duo Jesse y Joy. One of the reasons I like them so much is that I can pretty much play any of their songs, and most videos too, in class. They’re fairly positive & upbeat as far as content goes. Right […]
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November 17, 2008
New media list!
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I’ve revised and updated my song list for Spanish class. Here it is! For an explanation of my list, read this post. Hope you find it helpful!
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