Tips from Texas

I thought I'd look to my own university and see what online resources are provided by the University of Texas Spanish department. Spanish Proficiency Exercises is an interesting website project in which collections of brief video clips show native speakers discussing specific topics. These topics are grouped together under themes like "What and where you study" (beginner), "Describe an ailment to doctor" (intermediate) and "Feelings about a current event" (advanced).

These video segments are designed to prepare students to discuss similar topics themselves, to increase their oral proficiency. Under each topic heading there are simplified, scripted videos in which the subjects speak slowly as well as unscripted, normal rate videos that include slang. During the videos, you can see the text in English, Spanish or not at all.

The site provides key vocabulary and phrases for each topic, both to accompany the videos and help learners to discuss the topic themselves.

I love having a series of videos about each topic. While the language and delivery can be challenging for students, having multiple videos about same topic allows students to approach the material with activated expectations and background knowledge. They can understand the gist quite easily and then focus attention on the more challenging aspects of the language. The mix of graded and unscripted language provides a nice challenge within a comprehensible framework.

These videos are best for accomplishing proficiency-oriented, communicative goals. They have the added bonus of including many regional Spanish accents.