Mini Telenovela

       This program, Destinos, has been used in high school and community college classrooms for years to provide an interesting way for Spanish learners to experience the language and culture.The telenovela consists of 52 episode, each episode is 30 minutes long and begins with a two to four minute introduction and overview of the storyline. The first episode, however, takes nearly 12 minutes to introduce the story and its characters (and does so in English), but eventually continues in Spanish. The use of English is useful for beginner learners and also provides the viewer with background information that would be impossible to convey in simple Spanish.

      The stories are easy to follow for beginners and each episode includes a comprehension checklist for the students to answer. This is one place these videos could be used to get students speaking in the classroom. The teacher could pause the video (if watched in class) and elicit responses from students, or if the videos are assigned for homework, she could also invent her own comprehension questions to have the students respond to and share in class. Although the telenovela is obviously outdated, the storyline is still interesting and each episode ends in a cliffhanger, providing more opportunities for students to speak in class. The teacher could have the students write and perform alternate endings in groups or predict what might happen in the following episode.

     My sister told me that when she was in Spanish at the university level, her classes followed these episodes weekly. She says everyone really got engrossed in the plot and looked forward to Fridays when the class would get to watch the next episode.

Real-World Practice

It’s always a good idea to get students practicing using language for practical purposes. I found a site by Harry G. Tuttle that includes links to different menus from various Spanish speaking countries to help students practice conversation. The teacher could use this site in the classroom (as long as she has access to a computer and a projector because most of the links are to photographs) to have the students practice ordering food. The class could be put in groups and given an imaginary budget and take turns being clients or waiter. One link has a menu with a pretty bad English translation and could be used to promote some funny discussions about the risk of directly translating (check out the trout section).The teacher could check for comprehension of food words by asking the students about why they chose to order the dish they did and get them to talk about where the food might come from (beef comes from a cow, tortillas are made with corn, wheat, etc.) or how someone might go about preparing it. 

Teachers can arrange to have sets of the Ahora Sí publication sent to their classrooms in Austin. Current, local events are always a great motivator for discussions. Check out the website:

http://nieonline.com/ahorasi/order.cfm

The source (in case the link above doesn't work) is "Newspapers in Education- Ahora Sí"

http://orlandokelm.wordpress.com/spanish-language/
Orlando Kelm's website, contains some good links and lots of good advice on language teaching.

 http://zachary-jones.com/zambombazo/clozeline/
Zachary Jones' Zambombazo: contains worksheets and activities that utilize TONS of real-world, authentic materials (current events, popular culture, etc.)

Using Technology

     This website, maintained by RosettaStone, offers free language exchange for language learners, putting them in contact with native speakers and learners alike.  The site is easy and secure and once you have created a profile, you can choose from various language exchange options from e-mail and chat exchanges to video chat. I like that the site is monitored so that the users are really only allowed to share ideas in the target language, as opposed to using the site for help with homework or using it as a personal dating site. 

     Although most of these resources are best used by students individually, for classroom use, a teacher could assign the students to document one or two hours of chatting per week or even have them present to the class about some topics they discussed in chatting with native speakers and other learners.

     Students could also keep audio journals that document their progress. This website  offers good advice on recording your voice to make podcasts. They provide a list of free software that can be easily downloaded to record your voice on your computer. Using voice recordings could really be fun in the classroom, as students could make blogs  to keep up with over the course of the semester or year in which they can express what they have learned and present their podcasts to share with others. Voice recordings could also be used to involve students more in the classroom. The teacher could have the students create their own listening activities in groups for the rest of the class. If doing this, it’s probably a good idea to work with the students individually during office hours to make sure what they have chosen is appropriate and presented coherently. The possibilities of incorporating this sort of technology in the classroom are limitless.

Presentations and Commercials

This is the website of an Oberlin College Spanish teacher familiar with levels 1, 2 and 3 (beginner, intermediate, advanced) and it has some good suggestions as to how to go about organizing oral presentations in the classroom. I agree with the author that for lower levels, such activities like describing how to make something or telling the class about a trip are best. This gives the student the opportunity to practice speaking about something that is meaningful to him or her and is a great way to incorporate new vocabulary as well as practice new grammar and  verb tenses in a fluid discourse.

Although it might not be practical for community college learners, high school Spanish students could definitely benefit from some of the games suggested on this website. I especially like the Pictionary game and the “Who am I?” game to get students speaking in Spanish in fun ways.

Another good site that could be used to get students talking is a Dutch site for foreigners learning Spanish called Ver-taal. This video would be good for showing the students the imperative tense. This particular video is from Chile and communicates how people can prevent forest fires. The teacher could show this video in class and then have the students get into groups of three or four and create their own commercial. The assignment could be structured so that it either incorporates vocabulary the students have already learned or new vocabulary the teacher can provide, depending on the topic chosen for the commercials.

Youtube is also a good resource for short videos on various topics in Spanish that could serve as examples for presentations in the classroom. This in-flight movie provides an introduction to the city of Caracas, using simplified Spanish and vocabulary the students will likely be learning in the classroom. One activity the teacher could do with this is have the students work alone or in groups to create a video about their hometown or anywhere they have been. They could use this video as a model of some topics to include in their own presentations, as well as to get an idea of what kind of language is used when describing people and places.

Pronunciation and Vocabulary

This website, entitled “Spanish audio and transcripts” is useful for students who would like to have more isolated instruction in pronunciation. This page includes a recording of basic sounds (vowels and consonants) and even isolates those unique sounds such as ñ and ll. Instead of offering separate links to click on, this page uses in-page navigation which links the user to the major content headings (subjects) from the top of the webpage. For every subject, the website offers a thorough list of words pertaining to that topic as well as a recording of someone reading each of the words.

In the classroom, the teacher could use the sections labeled “polite expressions” and “giving directions” and have the students get in pairs and create a dialog with one another that utilizes these words and phrases. For example, the teacher could have them role play asking for directions in the street and have them use common, polite language such as “disculpe, le puedo hacer una pregunta?” This site is also a great source of uncommon, yet useful vocabulary. There are lists (for each word, pronunciation is provided) of such topics like crops, plants & animals, health & safety, and tools & equipment.

Here are some more exercises on pronunciation, from Studyspanish.com, which are a good resource for students who would like to practice pronunciation on their own. I particularly like the section about linking, which provides audio recorded examples from two speakers, one from Spain and the other Peru. I think it could be helpful to students to see how in Spanish, two words often flow together so that two words can sound like one. This site has three sections devoting to links, arranged by I. words whose final letter is the same as the following word’s first letter, II. words that end in a vowel followed by words beginning with a vowel or III. words that end in a consonant that are followed by words beginning with a vowel. 

These exercises could serve as the model for a great listening/speaking activity as well. After introducing linking and showing some examples to the class, the teacher could make a list of words (either two together or even whole sentences) that demonstrate linking and have the students work with a partner, reading to one another and pointing out when linking should be occurring. As the students get better at this, the teacher could also have one student read a passage (that incorporates lots of linking) while the other writes what he or she hears and then the students compare what they heard with what was actually said.

Talking about their lives

This site on Spanish language and culture offers a reading of a poem, “Instantes”, that talks about what the author would do if given the chance to live his life over again. The site provides the text as well as the audio of the poem. This could be a good exercise to promote a discussion about what the students might change in their lives if allowed to do so. The activity could lead to great use of the conditional verb tense and “if” clauses, as well as allow students the opportunity to be creative with their language. A teacher could play this poem in class and assign students the task of creating their own personal poem to be read aloud the following class. 

Another link from this same website presents a receptionist at a hotel describing a scary experience that happened to her while she was working. This video is most appropriate for more advanced students as the speech is natural and no transcript is provided (although there are exercises for learners to fill in the blanks if they do so on their own).  In the classroom, a teacher could play this at the beginning of an activity in which the students will talk about a scary time in their own lives,  which could be done in small groups or in pairs. The clip focuses on the preterite and imperfect forms of the past tense and provides the students with an authentic example of how people relate stories in Spanish which could be used to help them create their own.

http://coerll.utexas.edu/spintx/
 Spanish in Texas website. Contains videos of Spanish speakers discussing their lives and the use of Spanish in their lives.

Teaching Speaking and Video Clips

This website, created by the National Capital Language Resource Center, provides suggestions about all aspects of teaching languages and is particularly geared towards college and university instructors. The site has a section dedicated to “Teaching Speaking” which can be found under the “Principles” tab on the left hand side of the page (The above link should take you straight to it). The site provides many good tips about both what the teacher should be doing in the classroom and what the students should be aware of when working on their oral proficiency.

The NCLRC lists resources (mostly books) and strategies for developing speaking activities. In this “Developing Speaking Activities” section, the site addresses the need for real-life, authentic communicative exercises in the classroom and provides description of and ideas for implementing specific activities. One example: information gap activities where students are partnered and must ask each other questions to get information from one another. The website also gives advice for creating role play and group discussion activities and provides very useful tips about how to implement these activities in the classroom.

Another website I've found provides great examples of native-like speech. This site is entitled Spanish Proficiency Exercises and could be used in the classroom to prompt discussions. It presents video clips of native speakers talking about different subjects ranging from describing physical characteristics to discussions about American business practices. The website was created by the department of Spanish and Portuguese at the University of Texas and in the site’s introduction, they make the point that their objective is to provide students with the necessary tools to be able to discuss the same topics themselves in Spanish. The site is well organized, presenting videos on 14 different topics for each of six levels of proficiency: Beginner, Intermediate A and B, Advanced A and B, and Superior. For each topic, there are five or six different speakers from different Spanish speaking countries who present their own view/experience about that topic.

In the classroom, these videos could be used to teach oral proficiency in a variety of ways and the activities could focus on different aspects of speaking. For instance, the teacher could play some videos in class, pointing out differences in pronunciation among speakers and then the activity could become more focused on accurate language production. The teacher might also assign these videos for homework and then have the students prepare a short speech about their own opinion/experience with the topic. The video clips could also provide good opportunities for group work, as some of the topics involve dialog and real-life scenarios like giving directions, talking on the phone, etc.

The videos are a great source of authentic language in that they provide the student with exposure to varying accents as well as themes, both great for prompting discussions. Although the website does provide a script in both Spanish and English for each video, there is the option to hide the script so that only the video plays. They also offer simplified versions of the videos, where the speakers talk slower and some slang is omitted. This would be useful for beginning speakers who might otherwise feel overwhelmed with so much spoken input.

¡Bienvenidos!

The purpose of this blog is to share ways to address oral communication in the classroom with current and future teachers of Spanish. My focus is on teaching adult learners of Spanish, particularly at the community college level, and I will include appropriate activities and resources for such learners. However, much of what will be listed this blog can most likely be adapted for students at the high school level, too.

I find that in my own experience learning languages, oral proficiency is the hardest skill to acquire because often not enough time is devoted to speaking opportunities in the classroom. My hopes are that this blog can address this by presenting useful resources and activities that provide practical options which teachers can implement in the classroom. In addition, I hope this blog can offer students suggestions of ways to improve their oral proficiency on their own, outside of the classroom.

Please share any suggestions (regardless of target language) you might have that address oral communication skills/improving oral proficiency. The more ideas the better!