Resources to Teach Spanish

Blogs to get resources about films for the Spanish class

Today I'd like to talk about  websites or blogs which contain information about films and how to use them in a class. Some of these resources were created to teach Spanish as a second language so most of the films and shorts come from Spanish speaking countries. In other cases the blogs or websites are from schools and teachers who use the resources for the subject of cinema studies in Spanish speaking countries. In the latter, over 50% of the films studied are originally in a language other than Spanish. However, all the attached resources are in Spanish and based on the dubbed version of the films.

Todoele.net is a social network which has over 10,000 Spanish teachers as members. Their main goal is to share resources and strategies to teach Spanish as a second language. The website also gives information about courses, masters and even job opportunities. In the section about cinema there is a list of films with lesson plans created by different Spanish teachers. The activities are organized in levels that follow the European framework of reference. Almost all the films are from a Spanish speaking country an the activities focused on linguistic and cultural elements. The lesson plans were created for adult Spanish learners but many of these films and their lessons plans can be used in a Spanish bilingual or IB program.

Redele is an online magazine published by the Ministry of Education of Spain specialized in teaching Spanish as a second language. It's published annually and everyone working with Spanish programs can send an article to be published. The magazine started in 2004 and in the 25 published numbers so far we can find interesting articles about how to introduce films and short films in the Spanish class. All the previous numbers are available and all articles can be accesses easily.

Con "C" de Cine is a blog dedicated to all the teachers teaching Spanish as a second language who want to use films in their classes. The blog's author regularly introduces films that can be used in the classroom with suggested activities.

Cineele is another blog that also offers suggestions to use films in the class and provides us with different lesson plans ready to be used and organized by levels. The blog also offers a list with links to lessons plans based on films available online under the section "Actividades en la red".

Cero en conducta is a social network maintained by a Spanish teacher, which has the goal of supplying resources and information about the cinema ("the seventh art") to teachers. Teachers can register and participate on the existing working groups or start a new one. Some of the existing working groups are about specific films that can be used in a classroom; some other groups are exploring themes like how to use short films in elementary education. This website is a good tool to contact teachers who are working in similar fields to ours and start a collaboration.

These are some links to find information about films and how to use them in the Spanish class. Naturally, we all need to build up our own list of short films and films, create some activities and share them with the rest of teachers.

                                                                     

Humor for the Spanish class

When someone in Canada asks me about one recurrent feature in many works of art in Spanish, I always mention black humour and  surrealism. Both appear in every aspect of our daily lives too, we just need to have a look at the political and economical situation in Spain and how people are enduring it. It has been a tradition of the Spanish to use humour to help face hard or painful situations over the centuries. This vision can be found in the poems of El Libro de Buen Amor or in many of the passages in El Lazarillo, just to give you some examples. With the current economical situation, numerous writers and film makers portray today's society with an acidic sense of humour. It seems that laughing at ourselves is one of the best remedies at the moment.

 Spanish people dread going to government offices to do any kind of business. It can be a federal, provincial or local office, there is no difference. We have to deal with apathetic civil servants and in the end, we will likely need to go back because they will send us home with more forms to fill out. This is what this short film is trying to portray.

  

his surreal approach is very common in publicity. There are many examples but the way a brand of olive oil is advertised in this commercial, is one of my favourites.



Understanding humour will enhance students' appreciation of the target language and its culture. Video clips such as these will help students digest these ideas better because the humour is more "concrete". I encourage you to revisit or find similar clips for yourselves and your students.

Unexpected endings

A technique I like to use in my classes to encourage students to use the oral language is to show short stories, commercials or even news that have an unexpected ending. I try to find segments that elicit students' predictions of the outcomes. This way students can present their hypotheses and can lead to interesting discussions. Some other times, I encourage them to invent an ending for the story that we are working with. Naturally, there is a need to scaffold the language prior to start with the oral language activities.

The first example that I would like to comment on is a commercial from Argentina. I am a great lover of commercials and particularly Argentinian commercials. Before watching this short clip, we can ask our students to reflect on some commercials and try to find some features of the language of publicity, the settings, the characters. Do we expect a crying person trying to convince us about buying something? We can watch the man crying and ask what they are trying to sell us. After some discussion we can continue with the part about the soccer and discuss about its role in many Spanish speaking countries. Finally, we can talk about the unexpected ending and find out if anyone thought about the product they are advertising.

Capicúa is a short film by Roger Villarroya that deals with a very serious topic, how fragile human beings are, especially at the beginning and at the end of our lives. Capicúa is a number that can be read the same left to right as right to left. For example, 2112 is a capicúa number and when children, I remember that we were on the search of these numbers because they were like lucky charms. And our life is capicúa, we are as helpless and we need as much care at the beginning as at the end of our lives. We can start asking our students what babies' needs are and then they can compare the list with what the old people also need. This is the trick the director uses for an unexpected ending and to make us reflect about our own fragility.


The third example shocked me so much that I still don't know what the main purpose of the director is. The first time I watched it, I thought it was real people talking about their real experiences. I thought that the main purpose of the short film was to show how vulnerable we are and how our life and our dreams hang from a thin string. But after watching the totally unexpected ending, some new theories came to my mind and I think this is what we can use to trigger discussions and opinions.


It is always challenging to engage students to use the language orally. Using short clips with open or unexpected ending can be a good tool to convince students to speak using the target language. We will need to scaffold the language, give them some warm-up tasks before watching the clips...the results can be very outstanding!

Destinos. What is it?  Well, I really recommend you just read the Wikipedia article on it, but in short: Destinos is a TV show consisting of a series of 52 episodes, each about half an hour long, that was specifically designed by Professor Bill Van Patten who was, at the time, Professor of Spanish and Second Language Acquisition at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, to help teach Spanish to beginning and intermediate learners.  The Spanish used in the series is very clearly spoken at a rate of speed that I would classify as being at the low end of normal for native speakers (that is, it’s slow, but not abnormally slow), which makes it very easy to understand even for beginning learners (and with the addition of the subtitles, nobody should have a problem quickly and easily determining what was said).  The story and acting are pretty good (regarding special effects and such: it was 1992 and this was a low-budget educational film, cut them some slack, eh? haha), and I really like that the whole story is spread across 4 different Spanish-speaking countries (they did this intentionally so you would be exposed to a variety of dialects and accents, very clever and an excellent educational technique in my opinion): Spain, Argentina, Puerto Rico, and Mexico.

To watch the entire series online just go to the Destinos homepage, select which series of episodes you’re on from the bottom, then select the specific episode once you’re on that series’ page.  To turn on the Spanish subtitles, wait until the video loads (I’ve found this can take a bit, like 10-30 seconds or so) and then just click “CC” in the bottom right hand corner of the video window.

BBC’s Mi Vida Loca – This is a fantastic little show put together by the BBC specifically intended for the sole purpose of teaching Spanish to complete beginners.  It’s filled with drama and action, it’s very interesting and entertaining, you learn a lot about Spanish culture, and it is absolutely not boring.  Also, they’ve got numerous tools and activities to help you learn Spanish in addition to offering Spanish and English subtitles for the whole thing (you can have both turned on at the same time! note the screenshots I took below), such as an interactive (human) phrasebook that pops in here and there to teach you important vocabulary and grammar rules that you’re about to see used, as well as quizzes and exercises you can do.  This is really a wonderful resource, especially if you’re a beginner, I can’t recommend it enough.

English and Spanish subtitles:

Interactive phrasebook:

News

1. EuroNews – Fantastic site, they provide videos in one of several available languages and then there are transcripts directly below each video.  My link goes to the Spanish version of the site, the main homepage is here where you can select from various languages using the menu at the very top left of the page, the default is English.

2. United Nations Multimedia Page for Spanish – Here you can find videos and radio broadcasts in Spanish, all of which have transcripts with them, plus the videos have subtitles in Spanish, just click the little “CC” button at the bottom of the video.  Their YouTube channel is here, they have about four pages worth of videos.  Not bad, not the most riveting stuff in the world, but it works and you’ll learn about some things going on in the world.

Educational Videos (lectures and documentaries)

1. Spanish-language TED Videos (44 pages of them) – First contribution by a reader, and only a day after I first posted this–awesome.  Thank you, Dally.  TED, as many of you know, records and publishes free educational lectures and talks online.  The talks are in many different languages, their search function allows you to search by language, and most of their videos have subtitles, however…I did a little investigating before posting this and found that some videos had English subtitles, some videos had good Spanish subtitles (such as this one), some videos had crappy Spanish subtitles, and some videos had no subtitles at all.  So, you’ve been warned, you’re going to have to do some sifting.

Random Video Collections

Here is where there’s more sheer quantity than anything else.  Three of the sites I’ve found so far do something very similar: they just take random videos from wherever (usually YouTube) and then the users do subtitles for them for free.  Fantastic sites, they’re adding new videos all the time, and, of course, the biggest benefit is that they’re completely free.  The other two sites are run by educational institutes.  You will, with all of them however, have to sift through them and pick out what you want to watch (I, for one, am really not that picky since the primary purpose is for me to learn Spanish, so as long as it’s at least mildly interesting, I’m happy).

1. Amara aka  UniversalSubtitles.org – Wow.  I just found this one the other day, they currently list 2,396 videos in Spanish with Spanish subtitles (note that you can search and sort by language of the speakers and subtitle language using the search bar on the videos homepage, just pull the menu down and select your languages).  Again, these are just videos that people have found on YouTube and decided to do the subtitles for.  Note that you can sign up for an account and help subtitle videos of any language you speak.

2. Edustation.me’s Video Section – You’ll need to sign up for a free account to use this one, I believe.  Once you’ve done that, look at the menu at the top right and select the language that you’re learning where it says “Idioma para aprender”, then go to the homepage and click “Peliculas” on the bottom left hand side of the screen (between “Artículos” and “Fotos”).  They have a ton of videos there with subtitles, but again these are just YouTube videos that Spanish-speaking users have selected and elected to write up some subtitles for, the community does all the work (again, just like with Amara you, too, can sign up and help out by doing some subtitles in whatever languages you speak).

3. Rhinospike Spanish Transcriptions – Again, these are just a bunch of random videos and audio files that the users have decided to do transcripts for.  There appear to be about 70 transcriptions total.

4. Catálogo de voces hispánicas  by the Cervantes Institute – This isreally cool in my opinion, this is a collection of videos of native speakers from all over the Spanish-speaking world speaking their dialect of Spanish, so you can hear and compare how people speak in Buenos Aires, Argentina; Guadalajara, Mexico; Bogotá, Colombia; and Barcelona, Spain; etc.  Each video sample includes a transcript, a list of linguistic characteristics of this particular type of Spanish, and some information about the location.

5. Spanish Proficiency Exercises from the University of Texas at Austin – As best I can tell this is part of their Spanish program.  They have a lot of these videos, all of which have transcripts.  From the website: “A complete index of video interviews and podcasts, as well as related grammar, vocabulary, and phrases contained in this site is listed below.  A topical grammar index and podcast help are also available.”  Each video not only has a transcript, but it also has an accompanying explanation of all the grammar and vocabulary used as well as an associated podcast of it.  This is essentially an entire Spanish course based on videos of native speakers speaking…which is actually pretty good, to be honest, and it’s free–you can’t argue with free.

6. YouTube Subtitler – Subtitles in Spanish – This is one sent to me by a language exchange partner in Colombia–thanks, Diana!  It’s the same thing as the first few, a community of people who subtitle YouTube videos for free in their spare time, basically just helping each other out by subtitling videos in their native language so that people who speak other languages will do the same for videos in theirnative language.  They have 20 videos per page and 500 pages of Spanish videos as of right now, so that means that they currently have right around 10,000 Spanish-language videos with Spanish subtitles.  This is probably one of the largest, if not the largest, of these sorts of sites that I’ve found yet.

Learn Spanish with comics! Do you like Garfield, Calvin & Hobbes, Cathy, Foxtrot, Marmaduke, etc.? I’ve got something for you!

I just love this so much, it’s so much fun and to me that is by far the most important factor when learning a language: it must be fun!  If it’s not fun then you, regardless of how determined you initially were, eventually get bored, lose focus, and give up.  And what could be more fun than some goofy comics like Garfield (my favorite) or Calvin and Hobbes or something like that, right?  Hmmm, can you find Spanish versions of these comics? You can.  Online? Yes. It…costs money, doesn’t it? …..Nope! That’s the best part: online and free, so you’re just all out of excuses now aren’t you?  Ok, here’s where to find them:

My favorite site, by far, is GoComics.com.  They have 33 major comic strips in Spanish, including some serious heavy hitters such as: Garfield (my favorite!), Calvin and Hobbes (very close second place to Garfield), FoxTrot, Cathy, Heathcliff, Ziggy, and many more.

Additionally, there’s this very cool online comic series that I particularly like because it’s designed for language-learners and clicking the speech bubble gives you the English translation, very nifty.

Formative Assessment and Online Games

Teachers have created some at http://www.equizshow.com and found that other teachers in other places who also use Realidades for Spanish are posting quizzes that anyone can use. Here is one athttp://www.equizshow.com/play/12895

Google Apps

Many people are catching on to Flubaroo http://www.flubaroo.com/. With Google forms you can make a quick multiple choice and fill-in-the-blank quiz. Once the students take the quiz (for practice or a grade), the teacher adds the correct answers as the key then runs the self-scoring tool. You can email the grades to students. The teacher can look at results per questions as well as student success. The teacher can quickly find out what needs to be retaught. 

Presentation Tools with Audio

Brainshark http://www.brainshark.com/ 

Emaze http://www.emaze.com/
Knovio  http://www.knovio.com (Upload a Power Point, then talk about it. Your face appears next to the PPT in the movie that is created.)
Powtoons for Education http://www.powtoon.com/edu-home/

Prezi for Education http://prezi.com/prezi-for-education/ (Sometimes described as Power Point on steroids. Going from one slide to the next is a journey up, around, in or out. The wonder of Prezi is that you can add audio to each slide.)Educreations works on ipads as a whiteboard to capture voice and handwriting (like the SmartBoard Notebook 11 videorecording tool). Create your own videos.

Free Languages Games 

Engaging interactive tasks and printable worksheets that introduce, reinforce and recycle vocabulary. Activites are self-paced and self-correcting and include recordings by native speakers.
Download these free programs and create your own interactive games and activities. Follow the simple steps to add your own text, pictures or voice recordings. Suitable for all languages!
http://www.education.vic.gov.au/languagesonline/default.htm

Content Generator

Their programs allow anyone to generate their own e-Learning quizzes, games and applications through our custom software - no coding required.
http://www.contentgenerator.net/

Hot Potatoes

The Hot Potatoes suite includes six applications, enabling you to create interactive multiple-choice, short-answer, jumbled-sentence, crossword, matching/ordering and gap-fill exercises for the World Wide Web. Hot Potatoes is freeware, and you may use it for any purpose or project you like. It is not open-source. The Java version provides all the features found in the windows version, except: you can't upload to hotpotatoes.net and you can't export a SCORM object from Java Hot Potatoes.
http://hotpot.uvic.ca/

Video-based review activities

Blubbr is a neat quiz creation service that you can use to create video-based quizzes. Using Blubbr you can create interactive quizzes that are based on YouTube clips. Your quizzes can be about anything of your choosing. The structure of the quizzes has a viewer watch a short clip then answer a multiple choice question about the clip. Viewers know right away if they chose the correct answer or not. To create a quiz on Blubbr start by entering a topic for your quiz. After entering your topic enter a search for a video about that topic. Blubbr will generate a list of videos that you can select from to use in your quiz. When you find a video that works for you, trim the clip to a length that you like then write out your question and answer choices. Repeat the process for as many video clips as you like. Click here to try a short Blubbr quiz about the human heart.

Comics in the Classroom

Disclosure: Storyboard That is an advertiser on Free Technology for Teachers. 

Some of my favorite uses of comics include using them as story prompts, having students create them to tell personal stories, and to illustrate key ideas in a book as an alternative to writing a traditional book report.

Creating a storyboard can be a good way to organize a story and plan a video project.  

Apps to Help Students

Speak It is a Google Chrome extension that enables you to have the text on most webpages read to you. With Speak It installed just highlight the text on a the page you're viewing then right-click to activate Speak It. Then click the play button to have the text read to you. The voice is very digitized, but it is clear. Installing Speak It takes just a few seconds. To install it go to Speak It's page in the Chrome Web Store and click the install button. Restarting your browser is not required in order to activate Speak It. If you decide that you don't want to use Speak It any longer you can uninstall it by right-clicking on the Speak It icon in your browser and selecting uninstall.

New Features Come to Google Documents in the Form of Add-ons

Google Drive has supported 3rd party apps for quite a while now and many of those apps are quite helpful to students. Beginning today Google Documents and Google Sheets now contain a new way for students to add even more functionality through 3rd party services. Add-ons for  Google Docs and Sheets allow any Google Drive user to add new functions to their documents and spreadsheets. To access Add-ons just open a new Google Document and open the new "Add-ons" drop-down menu to browse for add-ons.

Good Alternatives to Google Image Search

The Morgue File photo collection contains thousands of images that anyone can use for free in academic or commercial presentations. The image collection can be searched by subject category, image size, color, or rating. You will find a mix of images that don't require attribution along with some that do require attribution so pay attention to the labels that come with each picture. Morgue File is more than just a source for free images. The Morgue File also features a "classroom" where visitors can learn photography techniques and get tips about image editing.

Every Stock Photo is a search engine for public domain and Creative Commons licensed pictures. When you search on Every Stock Photo it pulls images from dozens of sources across the web. If you click on an image in your search results you will be taken to a larger version of the image, a link to the source, and the attribution requirements for using that picture.

Pixabay is currently my go-to place to find and download quality public domain images. You can search on Pixabay by using keywords or you can simply browse through the library of images. When you find an image you can download it in the size that suits your needs. Registered users do not have to enter a captcha code to download images. Users who do not register can download images, but they do have to enter a captcha code before downloading each picture.

Each time that I visit it the Flickr Commons collection seems to have grown. The Commons contains images that have been contributed by more than five dozen libraries and museums around the world. The images are mostly historical in nature.

The Wikimedia Commons houses thousands of images that you and your students can re-use. Searching in the Wikimedia Commons isn't the most intuitive process which is why I don't recommend it for younger students. Search the Wikimedia Commons by keyword or browse it by category and topic. 

 Earlier this year the Wellcome Library made more than 100,000 drawings, photographs, paintings, and advertisements available to the world under Creative Commons licensing. The images available through the Wellcome Images library are primarily of a historic nature. You can browse the galleries or search for images by keyword.

Unsplash is a Tumblr-hosted site that adds ten new, free, high-resolution images every ten days. I scrolled through the site for quite a while today and found a lot of nice images. The downside to Unsplash is that the site does not have a search function.

You can find more than 85,000 free images through the Getty Museum's Open Content Program. You can download and re-use the images as long as you give proper attribution for the source of the image. Use the Getty Search Gateway to find images in the Getty Museum's Open Content Program. The Getty Search Gateway allows you to filter your search according to material type, topic, name, source, and location. Once you find an image, click the image's title to be taken to its landing page where you can learn more about it, get the required attribution information, and learn more about the history of your chosen image.

Creating Infographics

InfoGraphic making websites like Piktochart and easel.y offer templates and graphics for making InfoGraphics, students need to register with these sites to create.