THIS BIG GIRL CRIES

The age old struggle for teachers and professors of all ages... How do I get my students motivated to learn? After 4 complete months, we've come full circle... about 248 times. What do I mean?

How to get 12-18 year old Spanish students speaking English:

• Be seen on Saturday night at the bar or discoteca
• Be seen on Saturday night at the bar or discoteca drinking a beer
• Be seen on Saturday night at the bar or discoteca drinking a beer and dancing
• Be seen on Saturday night at the bar or discoteca socializing with anyone besides your students
• Be seen on Saturday night at the bar or discoteca socializing with an older male friend (old to them is 25) "You with old mans!"
  
• Say 'fuck' or 'puta mierda'
• Tell them how to say 'porro' in English and later have to reassure them by saying, "No Jorge, it wasn't a joint, it was a cigarette"
  
• Ask them about what they are going to do next Saturday

So, I did some brainstorming. Everything is definitely in the works, as the ideas aren't pouring out of my head for ways to make linguistics and pronunciation lessons enticing. But slowly, they are becoming more obedient, I can see a little more effort from a select few and they continue to crack me up.. My name being yelled with far too many rolled R's: KARRRRRRRRRRRRRLI!

Today I wrote the word evil on the board.
I said the word slowly: "e v i l"
They repeated: "ay-veel"
I said the word slowly again: "eeeeee-vuuuuul"
They repeated: ""ayyyyyyyy-veeeeeel"

MADRE MÍA

I wrote on the board: "ivol"
They repeated: "evil"

See, I figured it out. It's a new language, written but not oral, that twists the spelling of English vocabulary which corresponds to the Spanish pronunciation. For Spaniards to correctly pronounce "evil" they need the respective Spanish vowels that will effectively produce the correct English pronunciation. Well it's a bit flawed because Spanish only has 5 vowels so I'll have to think of a way to trick them into forming the the impossible English phonemes. But for now, I'm focusing on other ways to get their brains kick started with an English boost!

This week, in all the 3rd year classes (equivalent to freshmen) we did a specialized listening activity involving music. A fill in the blanks type, lyric style. I searched through my 6,320 iTunes jams for the perfect mix of Pop-American-International-Appropriate-Slow song, because with all the right ingredients, they are very capable of performing the task at hand. Nothing. Couldn't find a song. To answer your concern Caleb, youtube does function in countries across the globe.. So I browsed. Spain loves Lady Gaga. Lyrics not appropriate for school. Spain loves Green Day. Too much band sounds. Spain loves Justin Timberlake. "Cry Me a River" is too repetitive. It needed to be challenging, with a variety of vocabulary. Spain loves Black Eyed Peas. "I got a feeling" would only provoke memories of every Saturday night at the disco. Too distracting. But that's when I found it. Fergie. Lame love-break up song. Not too much band. For two weeks now, I've had THIS song stuck in my head.. I thought I'd share my misery with you.

Well, true to every Thursday, my weekend begins. And I got paid today. AND the sun is out. Time to play!