Writing  Composición

Dare to Motivate!

Motivating students to write in a foreign language is not always easy. But the more fun we make it, the better the chance is that they will learn to enjoy it. Below I suggest some links to sites that may be used to encourage creative writing.

Index to Activities and Ideas
Making a Newspaper or Magazine during the quarter
Nothing motivates like a contest!
Chain Stories
Scavenger Hunt
Portraits/Interviews
Letters/Pen Pals
(link to EAP)
Reports on current events

RESOURCES

A selection of Newspapers in Spanish. Kidon also has a more globally comprehensive list of newspapers in which you can find just about any newspaper in the world. (They also have other information sources such as magazines and...--check it out!)
El País -- The most popular Spanish newspaper direct from Madrid!
'RTA' Provides an opportunity for students to chat with others in Spanish in "real time". More than writing, this is 'VIRTUAL SPEAKING'. The RTA site pretty much explains itself. Check it out to see if it may be of use in your class.
Conferencing and Bulletin Boards in Spanish or English. Allows students to discover that the concerns of Spanish-speakers are not so different than their own.
Anaya Dictionary: Just what you've been looking for! Refer your students to this site for an on-line, easy to use, basic Spanish-English dictionary.
Y-TALK (e-mail in real time) can also be used to encourage writing or 'Virtual Speaking'. This is not a link to a site, but rather a link to some ideas for using y-talk to encourage communication while having fun.

ACTIVITY IDEAS

Making a Newspaper or Magazine during the quarter

Divide the class into groups and see which group can make the grooviest looking newspaper or magazine. Encourage creativity through using the web, ideas from the school newspaper, or other old newspapers or magazines that you may have at home. Have the students divide up possible topics and turn in their articles at the end of the week. At the end of the quarter (or semester), decide which group has done the nicest work and talk about their articles as a class.

This activity can of course be expanded and changed in many ways to suit your specific class. Remember, there are many resources on the web that can be used to encourage language acquisition and use, but they will not help your students unless you design an activity around these resources that will motivate the students to want to use the language. Make learning a language FUN!
 
 

Nothing motivates like a contest!

If you're able to use a computer lab during class time, you may give the class a list of several questions pertaining to various Spanish-speaking countries and have them work individually or in pairs to see who can find the answers to the questions first by surfing around through various sites that you start them out on. (I have provided several, especially on my "culture" page). You might students to answer questions like: Which is the biggest country in Latin America? How many countries have Spanish as their national language? etc...

You may want to add a couple of "what do you think about..." kinds of questions that could also lead into more of a discussion later in class. Have them write up a summary of the information they find and discuss it as a class.
 
 

Chain Stories

There are several ways to do this. One is to have your students form a circle in small groups (4-5 students) and give each group an interesting first sentence which each student writes on the top of his or her paper. Once they've written the first sentence and they understand what you want them to do, you will tell them to begin. All group members start writing a story beginning with the same first sentence. After a couple of minutes you clap your hands or say "cambien"--every student gives their paper to their left hand neighbor, and receives one from their right hand neighbor, after which everyone reads and then continues their neighbor's story. Repeat this until the sheets have returned to their original owners, who can now finish the stories they started. You might have the stories polished for homework and turned in to be corrected, or have each member of the group read their story to their group and together decide on the funniest one. Then have them work as a group to correct all the grammatical mistakes they can and have a contest to see which group turns in the best story (maybe have it be a contest for the story which is most creative and the one which had the best use of Spanish).

Here are some ideas for beginning sentences (which you will put in Spanish of course):

When I was young I use to...
One day I woke up and discovered I was invisible.
One day I woke up in an unknown house.
One day the President accidentally dialed my home number.
One day I decided to only tell the truth.
One day I ran into [famous person] in the supermarket.
One day I discovered I could read people's minds.


Scavenger Hunt

This activity may take a bit of preparation time on the part of the teacher, but could be a very interesting activity/exercise for the students. Set students off on a scavenger hunt to find certain information.
EXAMPLE:
Divide the class into groups of 2-3 people that work together to gather information that you request about a specific country:

Then have them report to the class (maybe with a useful handout which they design). There are endless creative possibilities for using a scavenger hunt on the web to enhance your class. Please send me your own ideas so I can add them here.

Also, see my Culture page for additional sites that are useful in creating a scavenger hunt-type activity.
 
 

Portraits/Interviews

This is a good activity for the 1st week of class. Have your students interview a classmate and write 1 page about him or her. Provide some simple questions and topics (where are you from? what are your hobbies? How's your love life? ...) If the available vocabulary allows for it, you could have them include a physical description of their classmates as well. This is an excellent way for your students to get to know each other and for you to learn more about them. You may then want to have each student present the person they interviewed to the class.
 
 

Letters/Pen Pals

Give your students a real or fictional letter of a person their age from a Spanish-speaking country who is planning to spend a year in their town. The letter should include both general concerns (about food, culture, safety, etc.) and specific questions (what clothes to bring, or how much money etc.). Make students try and write a detailed and descriptive letter in response. Make students aware of cultural differences. It is also a good opportunity to familiarize them with some of hue stereotypical images other countries might have of the US.

You may be able to contact the Education Abroad Program and see if you can get the e-mail address of real Spanish-speaking students that may be coming to Davis in the near future and see if you can match up your classmates with a few of them. You may have to have several students write to the same person, but it will be good for both the student looking forward to coming to the US and also for your students as they realize the concerns of students in other countries and the difficulties they are also having as they try to learn a foreign language.
 
 

Reports on current events

Using the numerous Spanish-language newspapers on the web (which are all updated daily), students could give weekly reports on current events. Make sure you guide them well with prereading activities, discussions, or a look at the same hot current event as explained on Spanish-language TV or in a newspaper you bring in etc...

Reading English-language newspapers (New York Times, LA Times, CNN) can be an excellent prereading activity, before jumping into Spanish-language journalism. Have students read articles on the same world events first in English and then in Spanish. Have them compare the coverage, the points of view, the pictures, the lay-out, etc... and write up their analysis of the differences and similarities they come across. Always encourage students to include as much detail as possible.

Use your imagination!

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