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Saturday, January 30, 2016

Scaffold Authentic Resources for Listening Comprehension Success

If I had my wish, I would insert another 50+ hours for each level of language at my school.  I don't foresee that happening (ever) in the future, which means I need to make every minute count in my classroom. This translates into scrutinizing my lessons and activities for what is best for the students in helping them increase their proficiency in the language in the limited time that I have with them. 

I've used the the group, Sie7e's song "Tengo tu love" in the past as a simple cloze activity with my Spanish 2 students. After preparing my lessons this week that included this song, I decided it was better to trim down the focus to a smaller portion of the song.  


With that in mind, I created two activities for students to complete while listening to this authentic resource.

First, we listened to the song and watched the video. I wanted them to enjoy the song, plus I suspected if students had to complete the activities the first time they heard the song, they would be more interested in watching the video than listening for specific information.

Activity A - The singer mentions things that he does and doesn't have.  The reason I chose the song was the high use of TENGO so I wanted to have the opportunity to use TENGO when going over the answers with the students. I listed the following for activity A:
- things the singer says he has
- things the singer says he doesn't have
- things that are not mentioned in the song

Students listen to the first portion of the song and check or cross out the items depending if the singer says he has or doesn't have the item.

When we went over this activity, I asked students, ¿El cantante dijo, "Tengo un celular con diamantes" o dijo "No tengo un celular con diamantes" o no lo mencionó?

Activity B - The expression VALE MÁS QUE is heavily used in the second half of the song. Finding a song that includes comparisons is a plus because I often forget to include comparisons in our class stories. I listed the comparisons that the singer makes and students match the answers from the list on the right that will complete the sentence.  The sentences are in order of the song to make it easier for students to follow.

I paused and replayed the above two sections of the song to give students additional opportunities to hear the lyrics. Thanks to the scaffolding, the students reported that the activity was at their level and they were successful in hearing specific words in the lyrics.   

If you are interested in the document, you can find the pdf HERE

3 comments:

  1. Thanks so much for this, Cynthia! I added it to the authentic resource spreadsheet (https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1Y42vLGBZcyshm_tLJ-Mn2DlHFNuiY98F1xmEP7xg-bY/edit?usp=sharing) to be an option along with Martina's and Elizabeth's! One of my favorite class songs ever - I'm so grateful for the activities you all have developed.

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    1. Thank YOU for creating the google doc! What an excellent resource. I'm going to spend time this week checking out what is available there.

      For readers, a live link to the Google doc of Authentic Resources is below:
      Authentic Resource Activities for World Language Teachers

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    2. Hello! Is there something we need to do so we can have access to the authentic resource activities for World Language Teachers? Thank you!

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