Objectives: After reading the ancient classic by Don Manuel, EL Conde Lucanor, de lo que le aconteció a un mancebo que se casó con una mujer muy fuerte y muy brava, the students watch the satire, “La tigresa” in order to compare and contrast this satire with the fable of el Conde Lucanor. 

Connected to the readings of Technology Enhanced Listening by Montero Pérez: Through  listening the story of “la tigresa,” my students are engaged in the top-down process since they already have read the fable of El Conde Lucanor in class, and therefore have gained some background knowledge, and have studied the vocabulary which makes them more successful in attaining listening comprehension. With the excellent acting on the part of La gran doña, and Pedro Armendáriz, the students can gather imagery from facial expressions, gestures, and get cultural nuances of the era and Mexico. As the students listen to the story of  “la tigresa,” they engage in the bottom-up process since they have the ability to use captioning, decrease speed, and hear it as many times as necessary. 

Link to Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pcZBnczT2aE&list=LL&index=4

Note: This channel has so many great videos for authentic listening!

When teaching the topic ¿Cómo es?, I like to engage my students with a lot of probing questions about how things look (physical appearance) but I like to allow students to draw inferences on personality descriptions based on a given look or expression a character may give.  Using the story Pollito Tito from this site https://www.thespanishexperiment.com/stories/chicken-little  students are able to draw inferences and interpret meanings based on the context and pictures included in the video.  The story of Pollito Tito is a Spanish adaptation to the old fable “Chicken Little,” familiar words and expressions are used throughout as well as cognates and familiar phrases.  Because it is a children’s story the context and vocabulary are relatively simple but also very clear.

I like to give this use this video with students who have been learning the vocabulary on physical and personality descriptions however the video also incorporates myriad topics such as animals and pets as well as food.  This video is often used at the beginning of a lesson since it’s not very long.  After watching, I do a lot of probing questions and also ask them in Spanish about particular words and phrases they heard in Spanish from the video.  As an activity I like to assign a Flipgrid for this activity where students have to share what they gleaned from the video and also their thoughts on anything they found of particular interest although this is in English, by using Flipgrid it ensures that I get more responses as my teaching platform MS Teams, does not allow for Breakout rooms.

What I like is that the site provides a transcript of the audio however impediments include the ability to “click translate” right on the page which makes using it as a teaching tool or assigning it for independent homework difficult as students will probably just translate everything and read the story in English which would totally defeat the purpose of it being used as a tool for the Spanish Language Classroom. 

I also like using listening activities because they are great tools for vocabulary acquisition as mentioned in the text (p.153) and also because  they give students the option pause and play back any parts for clarity as often as possible without feeling pressured.  Best to keep those affective filters down.  Another activity would be a comprehension activity where students would answer questions based on the video.  Some questions would be in English and some in Spanish.   A final written activity students will be asked to respond to these two questions in Spanish:  ¿Cómo es el Pollito Tito? Y  ¿Cómo es el Zorro Berto?.  If F2F they would discuss their comparisons with a classmate.

Original link:  https://www.thespanishexperiment.com/learn-spanish  more stories available in other languages via  TheFableCottage.com

The vlog, created by Yovana Mendoza, is aimed at native speakers who are looking for healthy, plant based recipes. Her lifestyle vlog has 2.22M subscribers and continually publishes new content that is great to use in the classroom, specifically for a health or food related unit. 

Although YouTube is still used by GenZ, I find that they spend more time on TikTok. For the next part of the IPA, I find several authentic TikToks so that they watch as examples before creating their own TikTok (Presentational Speaking Assessment). I find that TikToks are great for the classroom as they usually present short, digestible chunks of information, and content creators usually caption the video themselves with key information.  One of the TikToks that I use as example can be found using this link: https://www.tiktok.com/@denissemct/video/6836136590679510277?sender_device=pc&sender_web_id=6917377385361196550&is_from_webapp=v1&is_copy_url=0

2.     The objective:
 “students will be able to identify:

- the suffixes “-ito/-ita” and the Venezuelan variation  “-ico/ica”. (culture)
 - the verb to go in the first person and use it in simple sentences.   (structure)
 
 I introduce the vocabulary (burrito, voy , lucerito, cantando, trotando, apúrate, llegar, ver) with images. After that, we listen to the song without the video and the students try to fill in the blanks in their worksheet. Then we listen to the song one more time and watch the video. Finally, we play a singing contest, and the winners get extra credit. At the end of the class, we spend a couple of minutes talking about the suffixes found in the song and some of the variations in other countries, and we share examples.

 

3.      As I was reading the chapter4, I saw my activity related more to the Multimedia Learning theory, introducing my students to the key vocabulary with the images and then listening to the audio/video. I agree with Montero Perez when she explains that the use of imagery is more effective in terms of vocabulary learning than listening only. Likewise, I believe my activity develops both, Bottom-Up and Top-Down processes. Repeatedly listening to the song, to stimulate work recognition and the captions aim to develop L2 learners’ bottom-up processes.  On the other hand, presenting students with images and new vocabulary (pre-listening) activates prior knowledge aim to develop L2 learners’ top-down processes. After finishing reading this chapter,  I think from now on I will be showing them the video at least once with captions and once with subtitles (I just learned how easy it is to do it on YouTube). The captions and subtitles  “may amplify learners’ chances of correctly processing the auditory input” and “strengthen their understanding of the message” (P.155). These input modifications are part of the Interactionist theory: input, interactions, and output.
 

Activity: 

We watch some of the videos when we study the unit on México.  As an introduction  we watch:  Las once herencias prehispánicas más notables del México moderno and Las once aportaciones de mexicanos al mundo.  Students create presentations on different mexican states and they watch the top eleven facts of specific states.  Students learn about the Mexican culture through common and not very common facts.  Relating the words to the images, students learn more about the culture of the topic they are studying.

Connection to the reading of Technology Enhanced listening  by Montero Pérez

Many believe (not language teachers) that when a Spanish speaking student watches/listens to media in Spanish, successful comprehension takes place but  that’s  beyond the truth.    “Town-down processes refer to the use of context as well as of conceptual and prior knowledge (e.g, topic familiarity, culture, expectations) in order to actively construct meaning. Taking into account the multimodal character of CALL-based listening, top-down processes may also include knowledge that can be extracted from imagery including facial expressions and gestures (Montero Perez 143).”  Students rely on gesture cues and imagery to help with them process the information successfully.  Many of the obstacles my students face is the lack of academic vocabulary and what videos offer is the missing puzzle piece for them to be successful.