BBC Languages

BBC puts together great resources for many languages, Spanish included. This website is for learners, and this website is for tutors and teachers.

The websites offer resources to be used online. Many of the activities for students are fill-in-the blank exercises with on-the-spot answer checking. Some of the activities have keyword or grammar boxes that you can print out and give to students to accompany the lesson, and some of the articles can be printed out.

Here are a few highlights:

• El Mensual is a feature with Spanish language news stories from around the world. You can browse by topic or by grammar point, and find articles with graded but fairly authentic language, mainly for intermediate level. For articles with a grammar focus, there are blanks to fill in and a mini-grammar guide. For those with a vocabulary focus, there is a thematically-linked word list to accompany the article.

• Episodes of Sueños, a simple Spanish TV series for learners, are available on the website, with video or audio-only available. Printable transcripts, word lists and phrase lists to accompany the short episodes are all available as well. These are simple, short, beginner-level, and focused around themes like "Buying things," "Healthy living," and "I like it."

Some of the resources aren't too exciting. For example, Mi Vida Loca, BBC's introductory Spanish video series, is extremely inauthentic and translation-based.

But on the whole it's a good resource for both beginners and intermediates, especially for supplementary videos and articles.

A Professor's Page

Barbara Kuczun Nelson, a professor at Colby College in Maine, has such a devoted following among her students that there is a Facebook fan club in her honor (seriously, see "Barbara Kuczun Nelson was sent from heaven").

Her Spanish Language & Culture website is clean, easy to use and full of resources for both teachers and students. Originally called Spanish Grammar Exercises, the site focuses on grammar points, which are listed neatly on one side for easy reference.

The cultural focus is pervasive. Authentic songs, stories and videos (with subtitles) from Spain and Latin America are used to introduce and practice grammar, with loads of audio and visual support, self-checking exercises and verb charts. There are mini-cultural lessons like this one sobre el Día de Los Muertos that would be great for classroom use, and time dictation exercises for students to review on their own.

A great resource for culture and grammar review!

¡Hablamos Ahora!: Videos Divertidos

My colleague Kaki, in her recent post ¡Hablamos Ahora!: Videos Divertidos, presents a link to absolutely hilarious and wonderful mock-music videos about Spanish grammar points. A great idea for capturing student attention and possibly a jumping off point for student projects!

Ideas and Inspiration

This fantastic blog is put together by "a linguist/Spanish teacher dissatisfied with the learn it, fight it, run from it, forget it second language process in the U.S. puts music and stories together to create a revolutionary language acquisition experience--in high school." What an inspiring byline! Posts include website links, homemade materials, lesson ideas, teaching advice and more for all levels and ages, though high school Spanish is her main focus.

There are so many interesting resources to utilize here. In the latest post, In the spirit of open source: Ciudad de las bestias, La Cuentista Profesora (as she calls herself) generously shares palabras claves and reading guides for all 20 chapters (!) of a book for adolescents by Isabel Allende. She includes a link to her Google Docs for accessing and printing the materials. This is for advanced, high school level students. As a huge fan of reading assignments for language students, I find this an amazing resource!

Another post provides a link to Nike's Spanish language website, along with her idea to use the "Nike shoe-builder" function as a personalized and extremely authentic activity with tons of visual cues in support of the language. The language is basic enough to be used for novice or perhaps intermediate students.

She's a prolific blogger, with nicely labeled posts that can be easily browsed under the labels section on the side. And I find her enthusiasm contagious!

Bienvenidos!

Hi and welcome to my Spanish teaching blog! My name is Betsy, and I'm currently getting my M.A. in Foreign Language Education, specializing in teaching Spanish.

I'm on the lookout for websites to help teachers like myself with ideas to keep the classroom fun, interesting and motivating for students. I hope to build an inspiring collection of resources!

I will focus mainly on resources for high school and university level teaching.

Any suggestions, links or other feedback are more than welcome- ojalá que les guste!