I’ve got a few students who had me last year and I know they will want a fresh challenge. They are beginning intermediate speakers, so I try to push them to be able to compare in Spanish. Culture is a wonderful way to do this task.

First I’m going to have them look at this website in Spanish: http://www.sanvalentin.com/costumbres/    If you don’t have internet, you can easily screenshot the 5 tabs. I like giving them screenshots instead of copying and pasting the text, because it shows the ads and makes it more real to them. If you can print a few copies in color, do it! Hang them up or let students work with them in groups. Reuse the color copies in each class to save ink. Also is gives that website credit where credit is due. (Update: the website is no longer active so the screenshots are included at the end of the post)

With the pages, they will highlight words they know and maybe summarize them in English. They will make a Venn Diagram to compare the U.S. to one of the others. I’m thinking this will be a good small group activity so they can help each other out. And maybe assign each group a different place to compare. Then there is a reason for them to walk around and look at other posters.

Finally, I want them to be able to talk what they are going to do for v-day for their “La pregunta” (the end of class journal entry).

Also remember that we want to promote world languages beyond the one we teach. There is a nice list of “I love you” in other languages on the last page: www.sanvalentin.com/costumbres/mundo.php