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 Although the telenovela is obviously outdated, the storyline is still interesting and each episode ends in a cliffhanger, providing more opportunities for students to speak in class.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.
it is the best way to teach student spanish courses in spain if they learn it in spain
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