videos
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 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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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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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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March 16, 2009
Want to make your students feel better about their Spanish? Show them this clip (or part of it, if you need to avoid certain clothing issues b/c of your class makeup). The reality competition “Nuestra Belleza Latina” just kicked off 5 participants because they failed a dictation test. The part where the girl says that […]
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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 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 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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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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