Hola, Charlie Brown

To practice both my listening skills and catching on to visual cues, I watched Charlie Brown videos in Spanish. Because this is a show directed at children, the topics are something that most speakers on the intermediate level will be familiar with. I will definitely use this in my future classroom. It's a good idea to center the videos around what is being studied in class. "Feliz Navidad, Charlie Brown" is great for studying about Christmas and holidays, while "The Manager" would be appropriate when studying sports and exercise vocabulary.

I really found these videos helpful because the characters overexaggerate all of their emotions and actions. This made it easier to understand what was being said (or not said). I realized that that was exactly what Krashen was saying with his Input Theory---students can "pick up" on the lesson and words when there are cues to go with them.

Ir de Compras

While home this weekend, I went to Walmart with my mother. The one we went to just recently opened and as most new ones do, it had self-check registers. I raced my mother to one so I could set it to Spanish. I love doing everyday tasks in Spanish because it gives me the opportunity to see words, phrases and commands that are very practical. Although I understood everything that the machine said, it was fun to see my mother, who hasn't taken Spanish since she was in high school, quickly pick up on the machine's commands because of the visual cues.

Although it would be unrealistic to bring students on a field trip to Walmart, activities similar to this would be helpful to teach students how to take advantage of visual cues as well as how to form and use commands.