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Teaching Foreign Languages K-12: A Library of Classroom Practices

Professional Development > Teaching Foreign Languages K-12: A Library of Classroom Practices > 31. Spanish: Hearing Authentic Voices

World Languages

K-2, 3-5, 6-8, 9-12

Spanish: Hearing Authentic Voices

Spanish I, grade 8: Davita Alston's class engages in mock phone conversations, brainstorms about how American teenagers occupy their time, and reviews a video of Spanish-speaking youths discussing their leisure activities. Later, two native Mexican students visit the class and answer questions about how they spend their free time in Mexico.

CLASSROOM AT A GLANCE

Teacher

Davita Alston

Language

Spanish

Grades

8

School

Shue-Medill Middle School, Newark, Delaware

Lesson Date

December 10

Class Size

26

Schedule

50 minutes, six times in a seven-day schedule

Video Summary

In this lesson, students talk about what they like to do when they are not in school. They begin by using new leisure-time vocabulary to make plans with a partner. In groups, they brainstorm a list of what young Americans like to do in their free time, and then prepare questions to ask native speakers about how they spend their time. Next, two young native speakers visit the class and describe typical out-of-school activities in Mexico. The class concludes with a comparison of Mexican and American activities, using a Venn diagram.

Standards Addressed

Communication: Interpersonal, Interpretive, Presentational

Cultures: Practices

Comparisons: Cultural

Communities: School and Community

 

Glossary

Information gap
Information gap is a questioning technique in which learners respond to a question whose answer is unknown to the questioner. This contrasts with “display questions” that seek obvious responses. Example of an information gap question: What did you buy at the mall? Example of a display question: What color is your sweater?

Venn diagram
A Venn diagram is a type of graphic organizer consisting of two partially overlapping circles. A Venn diagram helps learners see the similarities and differences between two topics. Each circle represents one topic (for example, “U.S.” and “Target Culture”). Common characteristics are recorded in the overlapping area between the circles. Information unique to each topic is recorded in the area outside the overlap. The Venn diagram is a strong visual support for concrete and abstract comparisons.

Connecting to Your Teaching

Reflect on Your Practice
As you reflect on these questions, write down your responses or discuss them as a group.

  • How do you incorporate interpersonal communication into lessons whose theme and language content are derived from a textbook?
  • How do you lead beginning students toward elaboration in the target language?
  • How do you create a welcoming atmosphere for native speaker guests?
  • How do you shift the focus from grammar to communication in beginning levels of instruction?
  • How do you judge which errors to correct and which to let go?

Watch Other Videos
Watch other videos in the Teaching Foreign Languages K–12 library for more examples of teaching methodologies like those you’ve just seen. Note: All videos in this series are subtitled in English.

  • Fruits of the Americas (Spanish) shows beginning students expressing personal preferences and interacting with the products of a culture.
  • How We Spend Our Free Time (Arabic) illustrates a teacher’s approach to help students activate vocabulary they have been learning and make cultural comparisons.
  • Family and Home (French) demonstrates beginning students moving toward interpersonal communication.

Put It Into Practice
Try these ideas in your classroom. Where it’s not already evident, reflect on how to adapt an idea that targets one performance range for application to other performance ranges.

  • To encourage students to learn how to talk about their world, design lessons with interpersonal communication as the end goal. This will help motivate students to learn new information and will make that information more memorable. Plan your lessons so that students move deliberately and sequentially from working with language structures and vocabulary to talking about their own leisure activities, such as going to the mall, watching movies, or playing certain sports. The students can then focus their practice on personal information and continue to elaborate on it during oral and written tasks.
  • When planning an interaction between students and native speakers, work with both groups to prepare them for the exchange. Students can write questions in advance or listen to authentic speech on audio- or videotape. For native speakers, outline the topics your students have been working on and alert them that you may need to mediate the discussion. For example, if the native speakers are fellow students — rather than adults who are used to working with learners — you may need to remind them to slow down their delivery or use simpler terms. However, as native speakers begin to make regular appearances in your classroom, your role as mediator can lessen. Students at all levels enjoy interacting with native speakers to test their language competency and to learn about other cultures; the key is preparing both groups for a positive experience.

Standards

World-Readiness Standards for Learning Languages
The World-Readiness Standards for Learning Languages create a roadmap to guide learners to develop competence to communicate effectively and interact with cultural understanding. This lesson correlates to the following Standards:

Communication
Communicate effectively in more than one language in order to function in a variety of situations and for multiple purposes

Interpersonal Communication

Learners interact and negotiate meaning in spoken, signed, or written conversations to share information, reactions, feelings, and opinions.

Interpretive Communication

Learners understand, interpret, and analyze what is heard, read, or viewed on a variety of topics.

Presentational Communication

Learners present information, concepts, and ideas to inform, explain, persuade, and narrate on a variety of topics using appropriate media and adapting to various audiences of listeners, readers, or viewers.
Cultures
Interact with cultural competence and understanding

Relating Cultural Practices to Perspectives

Learners use the language to investigate, explain, and reflect on the relationship between the practices and perspectives of the cultures studied.
Comparisons
Develop insight into the nature of language and culture in order to interact with cultural competence

Cultural Comparisons

Learners use the language to investigate, explain, and reflect on the concept of culture through comparisons of the cultures studied and their own.
Communities
Communicate and interact with cultural competence in order to participate in multilingual communities at home and around the world

School and Global Communities

Learners use the language both within and beyond the classroom to interact and collaborate in their community and the globalized world.

Resources

Curriculum References
Delaware World-Readiness Standards for Learning Languages (PDF)

Davita Alston’s Additional Resources

Web Resources:
National Hispanic Heritage Month
Web links to sites with information about Hispanic cultures, organizations, research information, and more

K-12 Foreign Language
The Web site for Fairfax County Public Schools in Virginia, which includes rubrics and useful Web links

StudySpanish.com
An online tutorial featuring a wide assortment of Spanish learning tools

SchoolNotes.com
A resource that provides teachers, parents, and students with an online community for sharing homework and other school-related information

Print Resources:
Garza, Carmen Lomas. Family Pictures/Cuadros de Familia. San Francisco, CA: Children’s Book Press, 2000.

Lorenzo, Patti. Get Them Talking!: Theater Games, Storytelling Techniques & Singing & Chanting Ideas. Houston, TX: Dolo Publications, Inc., 2002.

Ray, Blaine. Patricia Va a California. Berkeley, CA: Command Performance Language Institute, 2001.

Series Directory

Teaching Foreign Languages K-12: A Library of Classroom Practices

Credits

Produced by WGBH Educational Foundation with the American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages. 2003. 2016.
  • Closed Captioning
  • ISBN: 1-57680-731-2

Sections

31.1 Class Context

31.2 View & Analyze the Video

PDF: Hearing Authentic Voices

Web Guide

Programs

Session 0 Introduction to the Library

This program provides an overview of the entire library, with suggestions for use in professional development settings

Session 1 Arabic: Teaching Arabic Overview

Provides background on the standards with commentary by teaching experts and clips from the classroom programs.

Session 2 Arabic: People Who Help Us

Arabic Grade 1: Khamael Alaloom introduces her class to people who help in the community and teaches students a new letter of the alphabet. She projects images of community helpers and reviews their names and what they do.

Session 3 Arabic: Vegetables We Like

Arabic Grade 2: Rita Lahoud’s Art and Arabic students draw pictures of vegetables they like and don’t like. Students discuss in pairs what they drew and then present their drawings to the full class.

Session 4 Arabic: Comparing the Weather

Arabic Grade 6: Wael Fawzy’s class learns about the weather in the Arab world and practices speaking and writing using dialects. Mr. Fawzy shows slides of the weather in Chicago and Egypt and asks students about the weather in each place and then has them develop questions of their own.

Session 5 Arabic: How We Spend Our Free Time

Grade 8, Arabic I: In a unit on hobbies, Katie Quackenbush’s novice-level students practice asking and answering questions about what they like to do in their free time. In a small-group activity, students picks a card and asks classmates whether they like doing the activity pictured. Students then poll one another about their free-time activities.

Session 6 Arabic: A Place I Call Home

Grades 9 and 10, Arabic II/III: In a lesson rich with music and visuals, students learn vocabulary to describe the rooms and exterior features of modern and traditional houses in Arab countries. Manar Mayalah introduces the lesson with a song about a “dear little house,” then shows videos of a traditional house in Syria and a modern house in Lebanon.

Session 7 Arabic: Making Sales Calls

Grades 9 and 11, Arabic I: Eric Bartolotti’s high school class of novice and heritage speakers use basic greetings and express likes and dislikes through a role-playing activity. Students pair off, assuming the roles of telemarketers and prospective customers.

Session 8 Arabic: Making Plans

Grades 9–12, Arabic V/VI: Students converse about what they will be doing in the future, in pairs and expanding to a group of four. Belal Joundeya presents a scenario in which two celebrities negotiate their busy schedules to agree on a dinner date, and then he role plays a similar situation with a student volunteer.

Session 9 Chinese: Communicating About Sports

Chinese I, grade 6: In pairs and in small groups, Jie Gao's students develop interpersonal communication skills as they state their sports likes and dislikes. They practice writing Chinese characters for an ongoing activity — a letter they are composing and sending to Chinese students. At the end of the lesson, the students create skits to perform for their classmates.

Session 10 Chinese: Exploring New Directions

Chinese II - IV, grades 9 - 12: In this lesson, Haiyan Fu's multilevel class explores direction - both literally and metaphorically. While Chinese IV students practice reciting Chinese cultural poems, students in Chinese II and III work on mapping the locations of nearby restaurants and providing directions to them.

Session 11 French: A Cajun Folktale and Zydeco

French I, grade 8: After preparing her students for new vocabulary, Paris Granville retells a Cajun folktale while students act out the story. Students then create a story map to delve into the different story elements. Ms. Granville introduces zydeco music and the instruments typically used to create it, such as the washboard, accordion, and spoons.

Session 12 French: Chicken Pox

French I, kindergarten: Jai Scott's French immersion class uses the topic of chicken pox, from an Arthur book and a French song, and total physical response (TPR) movements to learn new vocabulary for the parts of the body. The class practices emerging literacy skills by matching vocabulary labels to a drawing of a person.

Session 13 French: Comparing Communities

French III, grades 9 - 12: Ghislaine Tulou's students work in pairs to discuss aspects of their own community. They also discuss a Canadian community that they had read about and plan what they would do if they were to visit. Through individual and group-centered activities, students learn to express conditional statements about personal preferences.

session 14 French: Family and Home

French I, grade 5: In this two-part lesson, Debra Terry's students integrate vocabulary about the family by creating an imaginary family tree. Then they develop more complex ideas by describing the location of family members in different rooms of the home. For homework, students write about activities that take place in each room.

session 15 French: Interpreting La Belle et la Bete

French IV, grade 11: Michel Pasquier focuses his class on interpreting and adapting film, literature, and music, using the classic tale Beauty and the Beast. The students work in groups to find moral meaning in the 1945 Jean Cocteau classic film and compare the film to the original story and a French rap song.

session 16 French: Mapping Planet Earth

French I, grade 2: Stephanie Appel connects her French lessons to content and teaching materials in the general classroom curriculum. She employs TPR and map activities to practice vocabulary for the planets, continents, and oceans.

session 17 French: Performing With Confidence

French IV - V, grades 10 - 12: This lesson focuses on advanced conversation proficiency with connections to social, political, and pop culture. Yvette Heno's students play word games, discuss French politics, and stage a mock press conference with students portraying celebrities and journalists.

session 18 French: Touring a French City

French I, grade 8: Prior to this lesson, Robin Neuman's students researched French architecture and constructed a model of a French city on the classroom floor. During the lesson, students take turns role-playing tourists asking for directions and tourist bureau agents giving directions and describing the buildings and the city.

session 19 German: Holidays and Seasons

German I, grade 3: Margita Haberlen's lesson combines the topics of seasons and German holidays to reinforce basic reading skills, build cultural knowledge, and introduce more abstract thinking. Using a Venn diagram, students compare aspects of Fasching and Halloween.

session 20 German: Sports in Action

German I, grades 9 - 11: Denise Tanner guides her students through graduated activities including a TPR vocabulary review of the body, a grammar segment teaching the German structure gefallen, and a discussion of the German medals won at the 2002 Winter Olympics. As a culminating activity, students act out a TPR story in front of the class.

session 21 German: Sports Stats

German I, grade 5: In Amy Garcia's German class, students write in journals, listen as classmates share their sports preferences, take a poll on sports likes and dislikes, and record the class results on a graph. Using a chart showing the favorite sports of young Germans, Ms. Garcia makes connections to math by having students analyze the data.

session 22 Italian: U.S. and Italian Homes

Italian II, grade 9: In this lesson, Marylee DiGennaro's students compare American homes with typical dwellings in Italy. The class learns new vocabulary words, then practices them during a line dance and a card game. For homework, the students compose letters describing their homes, which they will email to students in Italy.

session 23 Japanese: Daily Routines

Japanese I, grade 5: This lesson focuses on the daily routines of individuals in Japan and the U.S. Margaret Dyer uses a variety of activities including TPR, modeling, paired practice, and student-led charades to introduce and review new vocabulary and concepts.

session 24 Japanese: Happy New Year!

Japanese II, grades 10 - 12: Students learn about some common products and practices of the Japanese New Year's celebration. Leslie Birkland's class splits into two groups: One sings New Year's songs, writes cards, and plays cultural games, while the other discusses New Year's food and decorations. After switching activities, the class reconvenes to compare the Japanese New Year's celebration with those of other cultures.

session 25 Japanese: Promoting Attractions of Japan

Japanese III - IV, grades 10 - 12: As part of a larger unit on the geography and culture of Japan, students learn the major regions and cities and discuss popular tourist destinations. Using timed activities, including a fast-paced Jeopardy-style quiz game, Yo Azama, 2012 ACTFL Teacher of the Year, assesses students on recall and recognition. As a culminating project, students create a travel brochure and begin planning a promotional video to attract visitors to Japan.

session 26 Latin: Music and Manuscripts

Latin II - III, IV AP, grades 10 - 12: Lauri Dabbieri's class explores how Latin manuscripts are interpreted, translated, and created. Latin IV students work independently to translate a passage from Vergil's Aeneid, while students in Latin II and III are guided through activities in translation and interpretation. Then the whole class works in pairs to create their own versions of illuminated Latin manuscripts.

session 27 Russian: Russian Cities, Russian Stories

Russian I and IV, grades 9 - 12: In this unique mixed-level class, Jane Shuffelton's students work on geography skills, story writing, and presentations. Russian IV students are paired with small groups of Russian I students to read a story, gather information, and write their own folktales. Each group shares their tale while the remaining students use their interpretive skills to write down specific information. In a separate activity, Russian IV students debate the role of the leader in Russian history after reading an article about Vladimir Putin.

session 28 Spanish: Creating Travel Advice

Spanish III, grade 11: In this lesson, Fran Pettigrew gives her students a letter from a teacher in Chile who plans to bring students to visit the United States. Working with authentic tourist brochures in Spanish and their previous research, student groups plan itineraries for their Chilean counterparts. They prepare to send a follow-up letter to the Chilean teacher sharing their suggestions.

session 29 Spanish: Food Facts and Stories

Spanish I, grade 8: Students use math and science skills as they interpret nutritional information in a Spanish-language McDonald's menu. John Pedini's lesson integrates authentic materials, makes connections to other academic areas, and develops interpretive and interpersonal communication skills.

session 30 Spanish: Fruits of the Americas

Spanish I, grade 4: Teacher Carina Rodriguez combines visual media and multisensory activities in a vocabulary-building lesson about familiar and new fruit. Students learn what country the fruit comes from, try to identify the fruit solely through touch, and taste the fruit to categorize it as sweet or sour.

session 31 Spanish: Hearing Authentic Voices

Spanish I, grade 8: Davita Alston's class engages in mock phone conversations, brainstorms about how American teenagers occupy their time, and reviews a video of Spanish-speaking youths discussing their leisure activities. Later, two native Mexican students visit the class and answer questions about how they spend their free time in Mexico.

session 32 Spanish: Interpreting Literature

Spanish III, grade 11: This lesson centers on the story Dos Caras by the New Mexican author Sabine Ulibarri. Barbara Pope Bennett guides students as they recount the details and discuss their interpretations of the story and its moral message. Students act out segments of the story and then collaborate in groups to come up with alternate endings.

session 33 Spanish: Interpreting Picasso’s Guernica

Spanish II, grade 10: In this lesson, students use their interpretive abilities to learn about culture and history through art. The students in Meghan Zingle's class make initial observations about Picasso's painting, and then work in pairs to write and present a mock radio announcement about it. After reading about the painting's background, they discuss the history it represents.

session 34 Spanish: Politics of Art

Spanish V, grade 12: Lori Langer de Ramirez's class stages a political debate based on Spain's visa requirement for Central and South Americans who wish to enter that country. During the debate, students assume the role of Latin American artists whose work they had researched and weigh the pros and cons of boycotting an invitation to exhibit their work in Spain. After the debate, the class votes on whether or not to accept the Spanish invitation.

session 35 Spanish: Routes to Culture

Spanish II, grades 9 - 10: This culturally rich lesson falls in the middle of a thematic unit about the African presence in Latin America. Pablo Muirhead's students identify cultural aspects of stories about a fictitious African girl who is taken to Panama and enslaved. Then they work in small groups to incorporate these cultural aspects into skits to be performed by their classmates. The class also practices playing African/Latin American box drums called los cajones.

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