About this blog

The purpose of this blog is to display the assignments that the students of Spanish 0001 (basic level) have prepared during the course of  the Spring 2014 semester.

It should be noted that the great majority of these students have never studied the Spanish language before, and even those who have taken the language in high school often do not remember much of what they learned. I am thus pleasantly surprised that these students have done so well this semester and that they have been able to achieve such a high level of integration of essential vocabulary and grammatical structures.

This blog is also a response to my own concerns, since I have found in this group of young people many impressive reactions to a variety of stimuli. That is to say that although they have been doing the mandatory exercises from the book as well as the assignments from “My Spanish Lab,” the students have also been able to work with other sources perhaps closer to them: cinema, music, and art. But there is a difference here: all of these elements appear in a fresh, Latin American context.

The students wrote brief compositions in which they gave their opinions about the paintings of such artists as Rember Yahuarcani and Brus Rubio. Both of these artists are Peruvian and belong to a fresh, innovative movement of Amazonian painting. Students also saw the film “La teta asustada”, directed by Claudia Llosa; and finally, we were able to put together an individualized exercise: five students chose to work with photos, two of them by Martín Chambi, a famous photographer from Cuzco, and one taken from the book The Imaginary Book and Pictures of the Rubber Boom: The Events of Putumayo, 2009.

The rest of the students worked with songs. But for this group the exercise had a difference. Each student was assigned a different song (all of the lyrics were in both Spanish and English) and thus each student wrote a composition on a different topic and band, all of them Latin American except for one song that was Spanish, “Entre Dos Aguas,” by Paco de Lucía, which has no lyrics. The main objective with all of these compositions has not been for the students to learn theories or concepts, but for them to get to know a more ineractive, dynamic and personalized way of learning a language. In other words, they should feel involved and their interest should increase. Despite the fact that the assignment was mainly written, we were able to discuss in class some relevant points about their compositions. Students shared their opinions about the film “La teta asustada”; the assignment was not confined to written work but included discussion as well. In order to guide this discussion, I brought up the idea of how to go about representing the people of the Andes and the city of Lima (the capital) in the film. The debate was quite interesting and I think that we were able to discuss several points that could not have been as thoroughly treated in written form.  In other words, this ended up being one of the most complete exercises we did.

Likewise, I think it important to stress that these assignments do not seek to develop ideas of a theoretical nature, but rather aim to provide an opportunity for students to practice the language in such a way that they feel comfortable with it and are able to apply what they have learned in class.

I invite you to peruse these brief texts  in which you will see some surprising opinions. I think it is worthwhile to read this initial approach to a new language, to new cultures and, perhaps, to a new side of the students themselves that was heretofore unknown to even them.

So welcome to our Spanish 1 course, and please make yourselves at home. 

Andrea Cabel.

P.S., All of the assignments published in this blog were done so with the permission of their respective authors.