Teaching Spanish: The Essential Handbook

Acknowledgments

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Many people have been instrumental in the creation of this book, including my own teachers and professors, whose classes greatly enriched my life and my own teaching. I am grateful to have had the opportunity to teach in many institutions over the years, and to have taught a wide variety of students, each one special in his or her own way. Many thanks to Joel Swanson, Paula Adamo, Renée Milstein, Jim Gustafson, Sandra Peña Torres, Pablo Oliva, and my dear Charlie, who all contributed their valuable time, wisdom, knowledge, and talents to this project. Their inspiration, edits, comments, and criticisms helped improve various versions of the book you now hold. The support of those individuals and of other friends and family members has helped me believe that the words and stories in this book have the potential to enhance the lives of other Spanish instructors. I do hope they will.

Introduction

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You’re a Spanish instructor. Welcome to your new world! Your classroom will provide you more challenges, frustrations, triumphs, and joy than you have ever experienced on a daily basis. The explanations, definitions, helpful hints, and examples in this book are designed to guide new Spanish instructors through their first year on the job and to provide useful reference material for experienced teachers as well as for those who are new to the field.

This book is written specifically for people who teach Spanish, including those of you who have taught other languages and now find your job description includes teaching Spanish. The ideas, information, and solutions presented here are applicable whether you are teaching at the middle school, high school, or college level, no matter what levels of Spanish you teach and whether your job title is Teacher, Instructor, Lecturer, or Professor. In addition, this book finally acknowledges some of the biggest challenges in our profession. My goal here is to put facts and experience into writing so that other people who teach Spanish will know that they are not alone, and so you can become the instructor you desire to be.

You have probably already been assigned a textbook to use in class; most districts and departments chose one long ago. No textbook is perfect, but teaching without one is difficult at best, so you might as well learn strategies that will help you no matter what book you are using. Keep reading and you will find insider’s tips that will help you explain almost everything about the Spanish language, activities that will make your textbook seem more interesting, and suggestions about how to deal with the difficulties you will face as a Spanish instructor. This handbook will be useful no matter what textbook you use. It will also help you adapt to your life as a Spanish instructor.

Few people truly understand how challenging it is to teach, and even fewer have considered the obstacles encountered by everyone who teaches Spanish these days. It is my hope that this book will prove helpful no matter who you are and despite the makeup of students in your classroom. I also hope it will help you learn to enjoy your job.

A note about the electronic version

I have done my best to make this version as user-friendly as possible. Where there used to be columns and tables, this version contains mostly single columns so that the formatting will not be ruined when the font size is altered. This is why some pages of the e-book may not look as nice as the print version. In print, three short columns take up a small amount of space, where in the e-version some verb conjugations seem to go on and on. Please be patient with the lists and know that was the only way to make sure that the e-version would include all of the information found in the print version, in a format that would be easy to read.

Chapter preview

The first chapter includes insights specifically for Spanish instructors. This is information that is true in most schools but no one has ever dared to put it in writing. Here you will read information that is written sin tener pelos en la lengua, because it will help you keep your sanity. This information includes things like the qualities the best instructors possess, having students with different skill levels together in the same class, reasons students choose to study Spanish, and how to learn to love the class you have been given. Chapter one also includes thoughts about why you should adopt the old-fashioned idea of assigning each student in your classroom a Spanish name.

In Chapter two you will find a brief description of the students in today's Spanish classroom. They include traditional students (those who have not grown up speaking or hearing Spanish on a regular basis), heritage language learners (those who learned Spanish in the home and/or who identify with Hispanic culture because their ancestors were Spanish speakers), and native speakers of Spanish. Most classrooms today include at least two of these populations, if not all three.

Chapter three tells you what you need to know about teaching foreign languages in general. It provides a quick history of how foreign languages have been taught and a section about the importance of memorization. Educators all over the country today claim that teaching can and should be done without making our students memorize anything. Foreign language instructors think quietly to themselves, What am I doing wrong? The answer is: nothing! Memorization is an incredibly important step in foreign language learning.

Chapter four introduces the reader to some basic principles of language teaching, learning, and acquisition. Having a clear understanding of the principles discussed in this chapter will help you be a better teacher and will enable you to explain what you are doing in class and why you are doing it.[1] Chapter four also includes thoughts about teaching culture, reading, writing, listening, speaking, whether to give final exams, and pointers about how to teach with videos. Last but not least, it shows you a tried-and-true way to teach students to tell time in Spanish.

Please note that this book is not designed to push any one teaching method or activity type. Teachers who are in the trenches could care less whether Processing Instruction, Content-Based Instruction, or any other tool is the true way to teach. Well, they probably do care, but they desperately need activities that will work now, and that will not take them weeks or months to design. Chapter four gives you some dependable activities that will always work in the Spanish classroom.

Chapter five will prove to be the most helpful chapter to new instructors, as it gives pointers about classroom management. This is an incredibly important topic because classroom management (or discipline) is the absolute biggest challenge for new Spanish teachers; it will make or break you. Chapter five gives strategies to attract your students’ attention and keep it.

Chapter six provides a quick introduction to dealing with the learning differences you are most likely to encounter in the Spanish classroom: dyslexia, ADD, depression, and Asperger’s syndrome. There is no way to fix any of these differences and no sure-fire way to deal with them, but chapter six is designed to give you some ideas about how to approach them. Educators have so much to do and so much responsibility placed on them, that sometimes we lose sight of our purpose as Spanish instructors, which is to give everyone the opportunity to learn Spanish and become a more educated person with an appreciation of cultures and languages.

Chapter seven is a practical chapter about learning to like your job. You may not need to read this in July; wait until October or November for this one. Sooner or later all instructors wonder why they chose such a demanding, sometimes thankless, career. This chapter provides some helpful perspective to keep you sane and inspired.

Chapters eight through eighteen are meant to be reference sections. Feel free to read straight through, but know that you will probably want to refer back to certain elements in those chapters to brush up or to make sure you haven’t forgotten anything as the semester progresses. If you have been teaching for quite some time, you may find these reference chapters the most helpful sections of the book.

Chapter eight covers basic grammar concepts that every Spanish instructor has to teach sooner or later, such as spelling, accent rules, the gender of nouns, ser versus estar, and por and para. These concepts are basic and incredibly important, yet many instructors choose to skim over them or even skip them entirely, perhaps due to nuances that can make them difficult to explain. This chapter may be invaluable if you have never had to consider these concepts from the perspective of someone learning Spanish as a foreign language. It is my hope that you will never have to answer a question with the words, I don’t know why. I just know that is how we say it in Spanish. Declarations such as these are not helpful and they cause students to lose faith in the teacher or in themselves and their ability to catch on.

Chapter nine defines the three moods in the Spanish language: the indicative, the imperative, and the subjunctive. Even though you probably know how to form the subjunctive, there is a good chance that you cannot adequately define it. Many people’s response to the question would be, I earned a degree in Spanish and I never had to know what the subjunctive was. Remember, though, you are your students’ authority on the Spanish language. When they ask you what the subjunctive is, they expect you to know the answer or, at the very least, to be able to access the answer for them! Part of earning your students’ respect entails knowing your subject matter. This book provides the answers to questions your students will ask.

While in English we center our ideas around nouns and adjectives, in Spanish the focus is always the verb. Chapters ten through sixteen cover everything you need to know about the infinitive (chapter 10), the indicative (chapter 11), the preterit and the imperfect (chapter 12), commands (chapter 13), and the subjunctive (chapters 14-16). These chapters include how to form each kind of verb, how to explain the conjugations, and provide examples that will prove useful to your students. These chapters are a reference section and are not necessarily meant to be read all at once, but if you are a total grammar nerd like me, they might be riveting enough to keep you up at night. (Just kidding!)

Chapter seventeen covers the many uses of se in Spanish. This sounds simple until you realize how many kinds of se you may have to explain. They include the reflexive, reciprocal, and impersonal se; se used as an indirect object pronoun and the one used to describe accidental events; se used for emphasis; the first person present of saber (sé); and the (tú) command form of ser (sé).

Chapter eighteen is a short chapter with basic information about how Spanish varies by country or region. It also includes thoughts about teaching vos and vosotros.

Chapter nineteen was written because some key thoughts and ideas simply did not fit anywhere else in the book. This hodgepodge of topics include things like technology in the classroom, the Sunday Night Blues, hazing, getting along with your colleagues, and what to wear to work. Entire books are devoted to many of the topics in this chapter but, in order to respect your need for a helpful book that can be read in a short period of time, chapter nineteen is as succinct as possible.

The subtitle of chapter twenty, ¡Ánimo! says it all. Read this section after you’ve had a tough day or week.

You will find this book to be straightforward and the lack of technical jargon may surprise you. This first edition is as complete yet as short as possible because teachers are incredibly busy. Nearly half of the book is reference material. It is designed this way so you can find all of the explanations you need in one volume, including notes about grammar details that are not always easy to locate even on the internet. Please write to Dr.Rachel.Kirk@gmail.com with questions and comments so that future editions can contain the valuable information you truly need. You can also find me online at rachelkirk.com.

This book is mainly aimed at your duties and obligations in your teaching capacity, not your committee work or publications. It is designed to help teachers, instructors, lecturers, and professors who teach all levels of Spanish. I have done my best to use the word instructor and to avoid over-using the word teacher, and I have tried to specify when comments are more pertinent to those teaching at one level than another.

Believe it or not, many people think that teaching Spanish is fun. It can be fun but it is also very challenging. The table of contents alone shows you that it takes a great diversity of talents and skills to teach Spanish effectively. This book is designed to aid you as you approach and clear the hurdles on the track and to help you stand up, dust yourself off, and teach again with dignity when you experience some unexpected potholes along the way. I truly hope it will help you mold the future in a meaningful, graceful way, and that it will prove helpful on your path to becoming the Spanish teacher you want to be.

Chapter 1

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The Spanish Classroom

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Many of the things taught in education classes are useful. They are especially useful to future math, science, English, and history teachers. They are possibly less useful to those who plan to teach art, physical education, music, and foreign languages. What do all of those subjects have in common? Students are expected to move, make noise, and/or interact with each other continually. This movement and interaction make the classes in these subjects more exciting and stimulating for students, which makes life more challenging for instructors.

In this chapter you will find out what qualities make the best teachers, why students may choose to study Spanish, and why Spanish can be more challenging to teach than other foreign languages. You will also learn some bonuses of teaching Spanish and we will begin to discuss the fact that beginning Spanish classes often include students who are not beginners at all. This chapter exists to help you stay sane in your first years on the job and to inspire you to see your students and your job in a different, positive, light.

Qualities all instructors should have

Some people are born teachers. They just innately seem to have certain qualities that make them excellent teachers. Other instructors struggle to capture and maintain their students’ attention, even after months or years of trying. Many of the best instructors possess the same four characteristics: they are knowledgeable, charismatic, they care about students and their well-being, and they are hardworking individuals. Instructors who do not have these qualities suffer. Luckily, if you are hardworking and you care, the rest can be learned.

The best teachers are knowledgeable. Know as much as you can about Spanish, the people who are native speakers of Spanish, and the places they live. Memorize the information in this book and in your textbook. Go back and review what you learned in Spanish courses you took. Take more classes. Read and watch programs and movies to learn more. Travel and/or converse with native speakers of Spanish. Know about your field!

The best instructors are charismatic. Whole books have been written on this topic. Charisma includes the feeling you give people, your posture and body language, how you shake hands, and whether people can tell you genuinely care about them and are interested in them. Olivia Fox Cabane (2013) writes that charisma includes presence, power, and warmth. It includes being grateful, having goodwill and compassion, and emanating warmth and kindness. Part of this includes making sure your students know they are meaningful. If you are charismatic, even your students’ friends and parents will want to take your class. It’s a big plus when parents state how much they would enjoy getting to take your class!

The best teachers care about students and their well-being. You can make a difference by knowing about your students. Don’t know too much, but do ask about last night’s soccer game or their ailing grandfather. Express interest in something a student wrote in a paper. If they tell you they are on antidepressants, warn them that antidepressants can sometimes have the opposite of the desired effect, and that if they feel suicidal, they need to talk to their parent (or guardian) or a guidance counselor. Notice the student who was planning to commit suicide this evening but now won’t because you noticed he was there.

The best instructors are hardworking. Being an educator takes a great deal of time and lots of hard work and dedication, and it pays very little. There are very few careers you can have, though, where you can make as big a difference as you can as a teacher. You get to choose: will you make a positive difference or a negative one? If you work hard, you will have plenty of thankless days. However, the payoff in the long run will be fabulous for your students and the future of the world.

Foreign language classes

Foreign language classes are more stimulating than other classes because students are expected to communicate with other students about themselves and each other. In no other class is that expected or demanded on a continual basis. The best foreign language instructors make sure they allow students to interact and enjoy learning, but they know there is a fine line between fun and absolute mayhem; we must know how to keep our students under control. Make sure that you can get their attention at the drop of a hat. (Some teachers do drills on this sort of thing on the first day of class, establishing a sound or sign to get everyone’s attention quickly.) When your spirits are down, ask yourself whether you remember, every day, to be aware of the learning that is taking place in your classroom. Point out students’ progress to them. This shows them that you are noticing them, that you care, and it makes them realize that they are accomplishing something.

Why so many people choose to study Spanish

(Isn’t Spanish an easy language?)

There are many reasons why people choose to study Spanish. We have to get this out in the open. It will help you realize you are not alone. Reasons your students have chosen to take Spanish probably vary from the usual, my older sister took French, to "Spanish just seems more useful, to Billy has a learning difference and we know that Spanish is an easier language." Sigh. Then sigh again. Next year cover this on Day One. Here is the lecture.

Some people think Spanish is an easier language. In fact, it is not. No one language is easier than any other. That is why all children who learn their first language learn the language at roughly the same rate. They learn the grammar in roughly the same order (this is referred to as Universal Grammar), and their progress is roughly the same over their first few years of life. Children begin uttering words at seven or eight months of age, then they link words, make phrases and, finally, they speak in cohesive sentences and paragraphs. They are little grammarians when they are four years old, by which time they even know how to conjugate irregular verbs (they now say somebody spoke, instead of saying that person speaked). Children learning German do not take longer to learn it because German has cases. Children learning certain languages spoken in Africa do not take longer to learn those languages because of the clicks. Russians don’t take longer because their alphabet is harder and children learning Chinese don’t slow down as a result of having to learn the tones involved in their native language. No, all children learn their first language at about the same pace. No one language is more difficult than any other.

It is true that if your first language is a Romance language, for example, then you will probably learn another Romance language more quickly than you would catch on to a Germanic language. That is true, at least in the early stages of language learning. Someone who speaks Spanish will pick up French more quickly than she will learn Japanese. However, studies have also shown that assumed similarities in such languages can cause mistakes and miscommunication. So the early stages of learning a similar language should be smoother (note: English is a Germanic language), but only the early stages. Acquiring a second language and gaining fluency in that second language is more difficult than acquiring your third or fourth, no matter what language is your first, and which is your second. Let’s say that one more time, just to be clear. The easiest language to learn is your first language. The most difficult language to learn is your second language, no matter what that second language may be.

Please ask your students which is the hardest language of all to learn. The correct answer is: your second language. It does not matter which is your first and which is your second or third. The second language is the hardest to acquire.[2] The third is easier than the second, and the fourth is easier still.

If your students ever try to tell you that learning English must be so hard, write on the board, the English conjugation beside the Spanish: 

To write

I write

You write

He/she writes

We write

Y’all write

They write

Escribir

Escribo

Escribes

Escribe

Escribimos

Escribís

Escriben

In the past tense, English verbs are all the same (everyone wrote), and all of the Spanish forms are different (yo, tú, etc.). This pretty quickly ends the discussion. If it does not, tell students again that every language has its different (and difficult) points. The parts of any second