junio 2014 Luna profe

Visual orthography: la coma

This visual can be used for teaching just the ortography or we can also show our students a couple of things about the multicultural world we are living in.
My students always love how different is the perspective of using the comma with numbers in Spanish and Engish.

After reviewing this graphic, challenge yourself doing this on-line activity [Google form] where you have to rewrite some paragraphs using commas:

Learn when to write a "coma"

Remember: Smiling has a lot of benefits.

A study of the European Journal of Social Psychology found that smiling actually makes you more attractive to those you smile at, you are more personable, easy going and empathetic when you smile.

Source for online-activity:

Orlando Cáceres Ramírez [Perfil en About.com]
www.about.com

Lunaprofe 6/09/2014 No comment

Learn Spanish online: Mi vida loca

Bored during summer vacation?
Don't know what to do with your life?
You want to improve on your Spanish level?
This article might help you answering all previous questions.
Mi vida loca is an interactive TV show (or internet show to be more accurate) to learn Spanish independently. It's interesting from the point of view that the student will have to interact with the show saying phrases and sentences aloud (with the possibility of checking pronunciation) to make the show going, making the activity very close to Real Life Situations.
One of the situations you will face in the first chapter: you are in a taxi and you have to give directions to the taxi driver, then you will have to choose among euro notes the exact and correct amount to pay your bill.
Another interesting available tool is "The Learning section", which is a learning supplement with video explanations of vocabulary and grammar, plus extra activities.
You have also available a syllabus and multiple printouts divided by "Grammar notes" and "vocabulary lists" for each chapter and focusing in specific language functions. For instance, the first chapter will focus on learning these specific "language situations": dealing with simple social situations, saying yes, no & saying I don't understand.
You can also take a look beforehand to the transcript to anticipate the content, improving your understanding of dialogues.
Take ownership of your learning, become your own teacher. Take the risk and you'll see how much you learn. Take a look to the teachers' tips and practice a role play or make a comment on "culture" section, tell us something about tapas.
One thing to take into account is that this TV show is produced by BBC with the assistance from people from the north of Spain. Therefore, they speak Castilian Spanish.

Remember! There is NO Standard Spanish, all Spanish are standards and all are great, there is no one better than other. Each one has their own characteristics and particularities. For example in Castilian Spanish [used just in northern and central Spain] they pronounce the c as the English th- sound, while other varieties [Andalusian, Canarian, American varieties] pronounce the c like the s. Rather than being reluctant to learn different accents, I encourage you to learn from them all. Look at their culture particularities and compare them with the variety you are learning and get to understand and accept the differences.
Great questions your teacher should be happy to answer:
Why do they pronounce the c as th- in English in Castilian Spanish?
Why do they use "vosotros" in Castilian Spanish?
Why are so many varieties of Spanish in the world?

A green tip:

Do not print out any resources, save the needed files in your computer and work with them from your computer instead. You can make a difference. Remember that we need 15 trees to make 1 ton of paper. Want to know more about benefits of trees? Click here. Spread the word!

Resources: