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El día de San Valentín

Posted by Alvaro

Many people in Spain call it “El Día de El Corte Inglés”, because they think “el día de San Valentín” is just a commercial festivity (“El Corte Inglés” is the main Spanish department store). But there are also many people who consider it a special day, and they celebrate it showing their love and friendship. Although it isn’t a very important day in our country, we wanted to do an icebreaker about this topic because it’s a great opportunity to learn or review vocabulary related to love and relationships, and also it’s easy to connect it to the present perfect tense. The result is “El día de San Valentín”, a 6-minute story about three friends and the importance that 14 February has in their lives.

The activities that accompany the video also include an explanation of the Colombian “día del Amor y la Amistad”, a similar celebration that takes places every 18 September.
We also have another video related to friendship: “Mi mejor amiga” that might be a better option for beginner levels (Spanish I / II), since the plot is easier and the grammar just focuses on the indirect object pronouns. You can purchase and preview these videos in low resolution in the icebreaker section of our website.

Keep an eye on our forum for extra activities or more information about the ones included in the PDF booklet.

Esperamos que tengan un buen día de San Valentín.

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¿Cómo es?

Posted by Alvaro

Foreign language learners very often get stuck when trying to speak in the target language because they lack vocabulary. There are many strategies to solve that problem, such as using synonyms or asking someone to translate the word they’re trying to say (¿Cómo se dice “x” en español?). A very useful technique is to describe the object they have in mind, and our new ”¿Cómo es?” icebreaker covers all the basic expressions and vocabulary to do that: shapes, sizes, colors, expressions to describe its utility, adjectives such as ligero, pesado, blando, duro, etc.

The video, which you can preview in low resolution in the icebreaker section, features eight students from Aluche (Madrid) describing several objects from their school. The activities that accompany the video will prepare your students to understand it, and they’ll have many opportunities to practice these new concepts. Those exercises include four listening activities and a guessing game to play with the whole class, as you can see in the sample below:

 

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Two short videos to celebrate Christmas

Posted by Alvaro

We’d like to wish everybody a wonderful Christmas and good luck with the last classes of the year. We think Christmas is a great topic for the foreign language class, and that’s why we have added a new icebreaker about this holiday, following the success of last year’s ¡Feliz Navidad!

Navidad y Deporte is a 9-minute video about Christmas day, and also about one of the most original events that happen in Spain on 25 December: “La Carrera del Pavo”. This race has been celebrated in the town of Segovia for more than 60 years, and it has become very famous in the whole country.

The activities that accompany the video are divided in two parts: ¿Qué haces el día de Navidad? and La Carrera del Pavo. You can get a free sample of the exercises of the first part (including the audio files) by joining our mailing list.
The video contains several interviews that might be difficult to understand for beginner and even intermediate students. For that reason, we have designed many activities where the key vocabulary is presented in context, so students are able to understand the video and get the most out of it. You can preview these exercises in the following document, which also contains the transcripts and answer key included in the Navidad and Deporte package:

 


Finally, we’d like to remind you that we have another icebreaker about Christmas: ¡Feliz Navidad! It covers many different topics, from the three wise men to Christmas food, El Día de los Inocentes and traditional songs. Please visit our icebreaker section to preview these videos in low resolution and to order them, .
Once again. ¡Felices fiestas a todos!

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Los verbos reflexivos

Posted by Alvaro under: News

The idea of making a video about reflexive verbs has been with us since we started Bablingua. The only problem we had was how to match this topic with one of our main goals: filming outdoors as often as possible, so your students have the opportunity to see our cities, people and culture. However, most of the actions of the most common reflexive verbs –brushing one’s teeth, dressing up, taking a shower, etc- are usually done indoors. Los verbos reflexivos is the solution we came up with: Elena, a young Spanish girl, rushes through the streets of Madrid to arrive to work on time. While she hurries to avoid being late, she quickly stops to comb her hair, to put on her shoes and to wash her hands and face along the way.

This short video includes many reflexive verbs (levantarse, ducharse, vestirse, atarse, abrocharse, lavarse, secarse, peinarse, ponerse, maquillarse, pintarse, darse cuenta, enfadarse, alegrarse, divertirse, quitarse, acostarse) and it also features some of Madrid’s main tourist attractions: El Palacio Real, el templo de Debod, el Teatro Real and El Paseo del Pintor Rosales.

The icebreaker also includes a PDF file with activities to work on before, during and after the video. These activities will prepare your students to understand the video, presenting the vocabulary and explaining additional reflexive verbs, such as afeitarse or despertarse. They also will help your students to practice how reflexive verbs work in Spanish, and how to use them with other constructions they already know (ir a, tener que, etc.)

Finally, we had a lot of fun filming “Los verbos reflexivos”. We have decided to post in this blog a short video with some of the bloopers from this icebreaker, which will give you an idea about how difficult to film in the streets of Madrid is. We hope you enjoy it. Please visit the Icebreaker section of this site to preview our Los verbos reflexivos icebreaker.

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