Spanish Immersion weekend

Posted by: esperanza

Spanish Immersion weekend - 01/12/05 11:33 AM

Hola a todos...
I have just gotten approval to follow through on one of my ideas. So, this is in the real inital stage and I would love some of your thoughts! I am planning to hold a Spanish immersion weekend for upper level students (high school juniors) one weekend in the Spring. It would be at someone's home and I was thinking it would be from a Friday afternoon (after school) until Sunday morning.

At this point I have a few ideas. Please comment, suggest, etc.:

See a Spanish movie and have a discussion afterwards see a Spanish movie and have a discussion afterwards
Karaoke en espaņol
Play games, ie. Monopoly, Scrabble, etc.
Have a dance lesson (merengue, salsa, flamenco,etc)
have a cooking lesson ( learn how to make a tortilla espaņola, una paella,, etc.)
Meals would have a Spanish flair...Mexican, Spanish, this seems limitless!
Have a scavenger hunt.

SO, what do you all think? any thoughts?
muchas gracias!!
Esperanza
Posted by: filbert

Re: Spanish Immersion weekend - 01/12/05 12:32 PM

Sounds like a good idea to me. I suppose though that one has to be in the US (specifically New York) to benefit? Never mind, I'll catch you when you move to Spain! Good Luck!
Posted by: sallyanne

Re: Spanish Immersion weekend - 01/13/05 05:24 PM

could they read a novel by a Spanish author beforehand for discussion? Or poetry in Spanish?
Posted by: arthurg

Re: Spanish Immersion weekend - 01/13/05 10:28 PM

If you decide to show a movie, I recommend you consider Alejandro Amenabar's 1997 film "Abre Los Ojos". We watched this film during my most-recent class at Instituto Cervantes in New York, and I thought the performances were magnificent. Also the subject matter is something the participants in your immersion weekend would have no problems getting into.
Posted by: Nativo

Re: Spanish Immersion weekend - 01/17/05 04:26 PM

Some ideas, if you want to play card use "naipes" and teach them to play "mus" (spanish poker) any college student in naked without that knowledge.

In the movies department two suggestions, if you are going to show an Amenabar filn I'd suggest the first one "Tesis" the one he did while in college.

Something luxuriously cultural would be screening "el perro del Hortelano" one of the best movie adaptations of spanish classic theater ever done.
Posted by: GuiaGuiri

Re: Spanish Immersion weekend - 01/22/05 11:44 PM

If you are using a spanish deck of cards, look up the card game called "Truc", it is hilarious, and incorporates facial signals for the team members (two, two person teams) to communicate with each other.
It is not specifically a speaking exercize, but it is definatly a non-english communication exercize that gets the brain working and may be a useful tangent.
The total immersion method will work well if you can repeat it regularly. The method I had success with included fifty minute class sessions separated by ten minute breaks, three in the am and three in the pm, with the expectation that the student would spend another two hours of self study as necessary, over many many weeks depending on the language targeted. Try to include; A) vocabulary memorization and grammar drills, B) dialogue exercizes where the students memorize and recite dialogues, and C) writing exercizes incorporating accumulated vocab/grammar, this can be simply creating sentences that use the vocabulary and grammar from A and B.
Let us all know how things go!