March 22 - Reflections from Spanish class

Perhaps I am proudest that I have been able to teach my Spanish classes entirely in the target language.  That in itself means nothing.  What makes me happiest is that my students have learned simple phrases, have been involved learners the entire 45 minutes of class and have been using their limited language outside of class.

I began by introducing the greetings Buenos días, buenas tardes, buenas noches.  I used PowerPoint slides to differentiate between the morning (a picture of dawn), afternoon (a picture of the hot sun) and evening (a picture of the moon).  Then, I used my drawings of the sun and the moon, moving them like hands on a clock.  Students called out the greeting in accordance to the time of day.  In China, student participation most often comes in the form of call-response.  Students are slow to volunteer, but almost always participate when called on by the teacher.

I taught my first Spanish class in the form of simple, meaningful dialogues, introducing ¿Cómo estás? with its paired answer Bien, gracias.  This worked well until Kelly modeled the dialogue with the Estoy bien ¿y tú? which didn’t fall into the realm of familiarity for the students.  However, there were no students that could not correctly respond to the question ¿Cómo estás?

When I introduced names ¿Cómo te llamas? students had difficulty connecting the Argentine ID card with my name, which I had used to trigger prior knowledge, with my name.  After 6-7 failed attempts, I said the word ‘name’ in English to one student.  This broke through the comprehension barrier and students answered correctly from that point on.

After class: Students greeted Kevin in Spanish, even though he doesn’t know Spanish.  Student told Carrie that we learned ‘buenas noches’ means ‘good-night’ even though I didn’t translate the phrase for students.  A week after class, the teacher who observed my class could answer the question ‘¿Cómo te llamas?’