SAMPLE ACTIVITIES
The following are sample activities that I have incorporated into my lessons as an instructor of Spanish at Yale University.
Creation of a Spanish-language campus newspaper
As the culminating activity of a vocabulary lesson on media and communications in an Intermediate Spanish II course, I assign my students the task of creating a Spanish-language newspaper to report on current events in the Yale community. After completing several pre-task activities designed to familiarize students with the format and vocabulary of newspapers in Spanish (including a “scavenger hunt” on the website of El País), pairs of students take charge of specific sections and type their articles directly into a Google doc in order to collaborate in real time on the creation of the newspaper.
This activity allows students to produce meaningful content in the target language, as well as to reflect upon the presence of Spanish speakers and Hispanic culture on the Yale campus and in the U.S. more broadly.
Spanish-Language Guide to Political and Religious Organizations at Yale
Similarly to the creation of El Campus, this intermediate-level task requires students to think about the presence of Spanish-speaking students, visitors, and community members on campus and to collaborate on a Spanish-language guide to political and religious organizations at Yale. Prior to the creation of this document via Google Docs, students are asked to reflect on general characteristics of politics and religion within their own cultural frameworks, as well as to critically examine political campaign advertisements from the 2016 general election in Spain. Students also learn about the historical diversity of politics and religion in Spain through a map-reading activity of the city of Córdoba. In the culminating activity, students reflect upon the diversity of political and religious views and practices represented on their own university campus, and thus establish cross-cultural comparisons and recognize the importance of diversity at institutions of higher learning.
Shopping at El Corte Inglés
This elementary-level activity provides a task-based approach to clothing-related vocabulary and basic verb conjugations (e.g., ser, estar, and –ar verbs in the present tense). Students work in pairs to browse the website of the Spanish department store El Corte Inglés with the goal of selecting specific items without exceeding a fixed budget. This activity provides students with a real-world experience in which they must negotiate using the target language, with the added advantage of exposing students to new vocabulary and differences in vocabulary across Spanish-speaking countries and regions.
Constructing and Performing Self and Other in Columbus’s Carta del descubrimiento (1493)
This intermediate-level introduction to Columbus’s 1493 letter to Luis de Santángel announcing the European arrival in the Americas is designed to allow students to recognize the intersection of language use (e.g., rhetorical strategies) with the political and cultural roots of Spanish imperialism. By using visual aids such as maps and engravings as points of comparison with the content of the letter, as well as guiding students through Columbus’s description of the lands and indigenous peoples he encountered, I facilitate student understanding of the ways in which religion and scientific knowledge informed Columbus’s presentation of the New World to a European audience, as well as the way in which specific uses of language served the political, economic, and religious aims of Columbus, the Catholic Monarchs, and the trajectory of Spanish imperialism. The class culminates with an activity in which students draw one of six roles (Columbus, Isabel of Castile, Fernando of Aragón, Luis de Santángel, a member of Columbus’s crew, or an indigenous inhabitant of the Americas) at random and conduct interviews with one another. Students thereby view the “discovery” of the Americas from different perspectives and synthesize their understanding of the ways in which “self” and “other” are constructed and performed in Columbus’s letter.
