7th journal, January 31st, 2015

This week in my Spanish 201 class, I noticed some improvement in one

student that really got me excited! He was in my Spanish 102 class last
semester and he always participated. Often times, he mispronounced a
word or got the wrong tense, but he always tried.

This semester he

participates even more and now I noticed that even when he is confused or
needs to ask a question, he stays in Spanish. He does not fall back to his
English to convey his confusion to me. I can see that he is trying to figure it
out in his head and he verbalizes what he doesnt understand in Spanish. I
think that this is wonderful progress. Most of my students, especially when
they are confused about something, switch back to English immediately. But
this student, is really making an effort to learn the language and produce in
it. I hope to get him interested in study abroad and practicing with natives
because he seems to have a knack for it. It is very rewarding when a student
really wants to learn Spanish. I imagine if I ever get to teach French, I will
feel the same way when a student shows interest (and improvement!)
We did a really funny activity in my 102 class on Thursday that had the
whole class laughing. We were working on verbs that have irregular yo
forms and I asked each student to write 4 sentences using these irregular
yo verbs to tell us things that they do. However, one of the sentences had
to be false. Volunteers would read all 4 sentences to the class and then we
would have to guess which sentence was the false one. Some of the
sentences they came up with were so funny (as well as grammatically
correct!) These students of mine are very creative. One students sentence
was, A veces oigo hornos. which translates to sometimes I hear ovens.
I, of course, thought he meant to say something else but he was being
serious. I thought for sure that that would be his false statement. Another
one that he said was Pongo mi cepillo de dientes en mi mochila or I put my
toothbrush in my backpack. I thought maybe that was the false one. A very
common sentence, veo la tele por la maana which means I watch TV in

the mornings. was his 3rd sentence. I had the whole class vote on which one
they thought was the false one.

I was sure it was the one about listening to

ovens. But no, he actually says sometimes he hears his oven humming. It is
an old gas oven so I suppose that this is feasible. The one sentence that
everyone thought was true turned out to be the false one. He does not
watch television in the morning. This was a great exercise to get my
students to produce in Spanish and they thoroughly enjoyed it, as did I. They
are really opening up to the idea of speaking Spanish and seem to even
enjoy it.