Intrevista

Today, I listened to an interview with Sharika in Spanish. I found one that had English subtitles and decided that it would be the most helpful. Because both the interview and the interviewee are native speakers, I knew that they would be speaking very rapidly and subtitles would come in handy. I could easily use this in my future classroom when talking about music, or even awards (because Shakira has won many). I believe that this is a great example of an authentic text, and most of the words are familiar.

Las Noticias

Because of certain class projects that have been on my mind, I decided to look up the news in Spanish. I started out by just typing "las noticias" into Youtube, but I couldn't find exactly what I wanted. I eventually ended up on CNN and found a link for "CNN en Español." Here, I found an abundance of videos and news articles in my target language. One titled "El paso del asteroide por la Tierra" caught my eye. This article was about the asteroid that recently passed over the earth. 

Here's an excerpt:

“Existen muchos asteroides que estamos estudiando y que no hemos descartado que puedan impactar la Tierra, pero todos ellos tienen una probabilidad de impacto que es muy muy pequeña”, dijo Don Yeomans director de la Oficina del Programa de Objetos Cercanos a la Tierra en el Laboratorio de Propulsión de la NASA en una conferencia de prensa.

La NASA también informó que los observatorios de todo el mundo trabajan en estudiar este fenómeno en su paso cerca de la Tierra y que la noche de este viernes tendrán más información sobre la velocidad y tamaño del cuerpo.

I realized that although I did not know all of the words, I could understand most of it because I had prior knowledge of the event. Without this background information, the article would have been more difficult to read. I believe that if I were to use that discovery in teaching, I could easily show my students articles from the past, possibly even about major events, so that they could use their background knowledge to have a better understanding of what they are reading. 

Musica

Today, I listened to a few Spanish songs on Youtube. I quickly learned that if I do not have the lyrics in front of me, I cannot focus on or follow the song. I believe that this may be due to the fact that I do not have much experience listening to native speakers. I realized that I should try to interact with native speakers more, even if it's just by listening to music. 

The song I have attached is Despierta Niña. I chose this song because, after much research, it seemed to be one of the more popular and simpler songs in Spanish. Although I did not understand the song in its entirety, I gathered that it was a very sad love song. 



Listening to a song is very different than just listening to a conversation. The tone of voice is essentially the same throughout the song, whereas in a conversation, you can gather cues by changes in tone/pitch. If I were to teach listening using a song, I would find one that was very simple--repeats the same phrase over and over with a few variations. I also know that I would have to play the song multiple times. I feel that it would be beneficial to give them part of the lyrics, but leave words out so that they would have to listen carefully to understand what is being said. Even if they did not hear the missing word, they could use clues in their written lyrics to try to make a guess as to what the word was.

I do not know if listening to an interactive conversation would help me, so I may try this out in the near future. 

Leyendo en Español

This week, I attempted to read El Autobús Mágico. This is a Spanish translation of The Magic Schoolbus. 

This was very challenging because there were a lot of words I had never encountered. However, with a little effort and with the help of context clues and pictures, I was able to figure out most of the words. I realized that I can apply context clues to any situation in which I don't know just a few words. If I were to say that the way I read and figured out the words matched a certain theory, it would probably be i+1. I read something that was just a little above my level and was able to work through my issues and be successful.