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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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Play Bingo with your students

Posted by Alvaro under: Resources

Our first Bingo game is available in the Games section of our page. It is a great way to review 75 words belonging to the housing vocabulary. After purchasing this game, you’ll be able to download a .zip file that contains the game executable file and a PDF document with the instructions and the 30 different bingo cards.
Since the game randomly draws the words, you’ll be able to play as many different games as you wish. There are also a large numbers of ways to play it: individually or in groups, with just one card per person/group or more…
Bingo is one of the most famous and useful games for foreign language teachers. We hope you enjoy our version, which combines technology, sound and the traditional cards with colorful pictures that will surely help your students to learn or review these words.

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Student books for next school year: buy 2 and get 1 free

Posted by Laura under: News

The 2008/09 school year is about to end, and it’s time to start planning for the new academic year. We’d like to offer you a free student book of our “De Compras en el Rastro” package for every two copies that you purchase. This is a great opportunity to take your students to “El Rastro”, Madrid’s famous flea market.
We chose Madrid’s “El Rastro” as the scenario for our first long video because of everything that it has to offer to foreign language students. It’s always crowded, full of curious things, and it’s a place where people do the kind of things that are usually the topics of our lesson plans: shopping, traveling, eating…
The “De Compras en el Rastro” DVD is divided in two parts:

  • A 5 minute documentary which provides the basic information about this street market.
  • A 17 minute story, in which your students will go to “El Rastro” with Alberto, Lucía, Raquel and Elena, the four main characters of the story.

The DVD covers different topics, including the time, meeting people, relationships, transportation, buying a ticket, describing people, shopping, and birthday parties.
The “De Compras en el Rastro” package includes a 28-page book full of activities, the answer key and the scripts of the DVD.
You can order “De Compras en el Rastro” and the student’s books in the video section of this page. Please notice that the $15.00 transport fee only applies to orders below $80.00. When ordering student’s books, introduce the number of copies you’d like to pay for, and we’ll add a free book for every two purchases.

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