Bringing Linguistics into the Spanish Language Classroom

A Teacher's Guide

Judy Hochberg

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2021
• eBook ISBN: 9780429655722
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Languages & Linguistics
• Subtopic: Languages
• Index: Languages & Linguistics

Bringing Linguistics into the Spanish Language Classroom is a practical, time-saving resource that allows teachers to easily integrate the most interesting and important findings of Hispanic linguistics into their Spanish language classes.

Teachers will find classroom-ready explanations and PowerPoint slides for each topic covered, as well as instructions and materials for in-class activities and take-home projects that will engage students in this fresh take on the target language. Slide presentations for each chapter are available online at www.routledge.com/9780367111960.

The book covers aspects of Spanish from the trilled r to the personal a, from Indo-European origins to modern dialects, and from children's first words to adult speech errors. An innovative set of five linguistics-based essential questions organizes and contextualizes this wide range of material:

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• How is Spanish different from other languages?

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• How is Spanish similar to other languages?

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• What are the roots of Spanish?

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• How does Spanish vary?

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• How do people learn and use Spanish?

Fully customizable to teacher and student interest, proficiency level, and time available in class, this book is ideal for Spanish language teachers looking to incorporate valuable linguistic insights into their curricula, even if they lack prior knowledge of this field. It is an excellent resource for Hispanic linguistics courses as well.

Chapter 1

How is Spanish different from other languages?

This chapter describes features of Spanish that are unusual or even unique among the languages of the world. Knowing what sets Spanish apart from other languages can help motivate students. This is especially important for features that students tend to neglect, such as the inverted ¿ and ¡ questions marks, or that pose a learning challenge, such as the many past tenses of Spanish. Essentially, while these features may be a nuisance for students, they help to make Spanish special.

The chapter begins with the status of Spanish as a major world language, surely one of the language’s most unusual features, then moves on to specific aspects of the language. As in later chapters, these run the gamut from Spanish writing to phonology, vocabulary, and grammar. The inverted marks and the past tenses are examples of writing and grammar. In terms of phonology, the Castilian th is an example of an unusual sound, while in terms of vocabulary, the preposition en is unusual because its meaning is so broad.

Some of the in-class activities and take-home projects for this chapter ask students to celebrate a feature of Spanish: making word clouds of words with an eñe, for instance, or plotting on a map the home countries of the eleven Spanish-speaking Nobel laureates in literature. Others give students the chance to explore a feature in more depth: for example, learning about the Real Academia Española (RAE) from the institution’s own videos, or considering how some authors exploit the contrast between the -ra and -se imperfect subjunctives. Some delve into history: for example, using open-access Internet software to track the growing ascendancy of the -ra imperfect subjunctive, or witnessing the origins of the tilde in Christopher Columbus’s letter about his first voyage. Finally, some activities and projects ask students to engage with a linguistic feature: for example, debating the value of the inverted marks, or trying to use all of Spanish’s many past tenses in a summary of a story or video. For a full list of the chapter’s activities and projects, and their suitability for different levels of instruction, see Appendices A and B.

Later chapters explore two other unusual features of Spanish: the development of its language standard through conquest rather than cultural dominance (“The Reconquista,” in Chapter 3) and the psychological impact of the “se accidental” (“Language and Thought,” in Chapter 5).

Spanish in the world

Speakers and countries

Just the facts

Spanish is a major world language. It is ranked second worldwide in its number of first-language speakers, after Chinese and ahead of English (Slide 1.1, based on Eberhard, Simons, and Fennig 2020). It is an official language in twenty-one countries in five continents: the three Americas (South, Central, and North), Europe, and Africa (Slide 1.2).

Teacher talk

“El español es el segundo idioma más hablado del mundo, después del chino y antes del inglés. También es un idioma oficial en veintiún países en cinco continentes: Europa, África y las tres Américas.”

In-class activities

As described in the Introduction, teachers can adapt the first two activities to a range of Spanish abilities.

• Rank Spanish among the world’s top languages. The teacher displays a list of the world’s ten most widely spoken languages, shown in alphabetical order in Slide 1.3. Student pairs or groups estimate which language has the most speakers, which the second most, and so on down to ten. To incorporate practice of higher numbers, students can also estimate each language’s number of speakers. Students then report their estimated rankings (and populations) for each language, with a volunteer recording them on the board. At this point student estimates can be compared with the actual rankings and numbers of speakers in Slide 1.1.
• Rank the top five Spanish-speaking countries. Student pairs or groups write down, in order, which they believe are the five Spanish-speaking countries with the most first-language Spanish speakers. They can do this with or without reference to the list of Spanish-speaking countries in Slide 1.4. As in the previous activity, to incorporate practice of higher numbers, students can also estimate the number of first-language Spanish speakers in each of their designated top five countries. Again as in the previous activity, students report their proposed rankings (and populations) as a volunteer records these on the board; the class then compares them with the actual top five countries in Slide 1.5 (based on Eberhard, Simons, and Fennig 2020).
  Afterward, the class can discuss any surprises in these data. For example, in the author’s experience many students assume that Puerto Rico is in the top five, but almost all overlook Colombia. They are also impressed that the United States makes the top five. If a list of Spanish-speaking countries is not provided as in Slide 1.4, students may include Brazil.
• Map Spanish-speaking countries by name and population size. For this activity, each pair or group of students needs a copy of the outline map in Slide 1.6, which includes all Spanish-speaking countries as well as their neighboring countries in the Americas, Europe, and Africa. Working from the list of countries in Slide 1.7, and referring to a labeled map as needed, students then add country names to their map (most names will fit in the oceans) and color-code the countries according to their number of first-language Spanish speakers. The colors in Slide 1.7 designate different ranges of population size; for example, the countries in green have fewer than a million such speakers. Students can use these colors or choose their own – or, for that matter, different population ranges.
  As in the previous activity, the class can then discuss any surprises in the data. Teachers can also point out that many residents of Spain, Guatemala, Peru, Bolivia, and Paraguay are excluded from the data in Slide 1.7 because they speak a language other than Spanish as a first language (see Chapter 4).

Take-home project

• Profile a Spanish-speaking country. Each student chooses or is assigned a Spanish-speaking country to profile. If there are more students than countries, students can work in pairs; if there are more countries than students, the teacher or students can decide which to include in the project. Using resources such as the CIA World Factbook, Ethnologue (if students have access through their school), or Wikipedia (if school policy allows), each student creates a language profile of his or her assigned country that includes the information shown in Slide 1.8. The profile may be in the form of a poster, slide presentation, or oral report that can be shared with the class.

The Academy system

Just the facts

Spanish has a worldwide institutional presence. Each Spanish-speaking country, including the United States and the Philippines, has an official Spanish language Academy; together, the twenty-three Academies form the Asociación de Academias de la Lengua Española (ASALE). ASALE publishes popular books including various grammars, dictionaries, and a spelling guide. Both laypeople and scholars use its online resources, including a dictionary maintained by the Real Academia Española (Spain’s original Academy). ASALE holds periodic conferences at which representatives from each country vote on issues such as spelling reform and new vocabulary.

Teacher talk

“Cada país de habla española, incluso los Estados Unidos, tiene una ‘Academia’ que estudia y mantiene el idioma. La Asociación de Academias de la Lengua Española publica diccionarios y otros libros, y decide cuestiones como la aceptación de nuevo vocabulario y los cambios ortográficos.”

In-class activities

• Learn from videos about the Real Academia Española. Slides 1.9 and 1.10 contain links to two introductory videos from the Real Academia Española; Spanish subtitles are available. These slides also contain a list of possible comprehension questions based on the videos.
• Debate the Real Academia Española. Hold a class debate on one of the topics in Slide 1.11.
• Discuss the elimination of ch and ll. A recent example of the power of the Academy system was the 1994 decision to eliminate ch and ll as distinct “letters” of the Spanish alphabet (technically, digraphs or dígrafos). This change was instigated by Spain’s Real Academia Española, adopted by a majority vote of the ASALE members in 1994, and fully implemented in 2010. Students can read the Academia’s summary of the change (Slide 1.12, from RAE 2010) and discuss its advantages and disadvantages (a possible list is in Slide 1.13). Slide 1.14 relays a humorous reaction to the elimination of ch from the late Hugo Chávez, the former president of Venezuela (Notimérica 2010). The class should try to explain his joke, which relies on a deliberate misunderstanding of the RAE’s change in the alphabet.

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Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• 1 How is Spanish different from other languages?
• 2 How is Spanish similar to other languages?
• 3 What are the roots of Spanish?
• 4 How does Spanish vary?
• 5 How do people learn and use Spanish?
• Appendix A: In-class activities
• Appendix B: Take-home projects
• Appendix C: Slides
• Index