CLICK HERE TO READ THIS INFO IN SPANISH Choosing a Joke for Your Class You know your class. You undoubtedly know better than anyone what you students understand and what they don’t understand. You probably also know what kinds of things they find funny. What Can Be Achieved with This Book This book can be read just for the pleasure of reading it or to complement other ways of acquiring Spanish. It can be part of a course, or it can be something separate. Stephen Krashen, the famous language acquisition and reading expert, says that reading chosen by the reader, what he calls “Free Voluntary Reading” (or FVR), helps greatly to bring about language acquisition. When students have the freedom to choose what they want to read, they have the opportunity to learn what interests them. Whether this book is used in this way or some other way, reading it will allow them to become more deeply familiar with many characteristics of Spanish and to do so without necessarily paying attention to vocabulary and grammatical usage. Whatever the circumstances this book is used in may be, certain ideas about language acquisition may deserve your consideration.You know the goals that you have for your class. Among them may be:1. the development of the ability to read Spanish2. the development of the ability to understand spoken Spanish and to speak it fluentlyWhen a person can speak fluently, the words and normal grammatical usage in her speech are so familiar to her that they readily come to her mind and to her tongue for her to say what she wants to express. Generally, in order to achieve this, she needs to have heard and understood these forms and words many, many times. The number of grammatical elements and words may be quite limited or it may be immense. If it is limited, she cannot say much even though she can say fluently what she is able to say. If the number of grammatical elements and words is immense, she can speak like a native or almost like a native (her pronunciation may not be native).So, to develop fluency, it is necessary to provide orally the same grammatical usages and the same words in comprehensible ways many, many times. So that these usages and words won’t be boring, it is necessary to vary the ways of presenting them.If you want to help your students develop spoken fluency, we recommend that you present each joke little by little orally. This book consists of 30 short jokes. Obviously, this is only part of the process of acquiring Spanish. Preparations Before beginning, look over the language used in the joke. Write on the board* (or on a large piece of paper or on a document camera) every word and expression that the students are not already very familiar with and to the right of each word or expression write the English translation. (NOTE: *From this point on, when we mention the board, we are referring to any means of displaying words.) It is practical to put the words and expressions in categories like the following (examples from “Paco maneja mal”, p. 61): Structures/Phrases le voy a dar is going to give you ¿En qué va a gastar el premio? What are you going to spend the prize on? asiento de atrás back seat el asiento de al lado the seat beside la verdad es the truth is licencia de manejo driver license Other words maneja drives enojado angry premio prize duerme: se duerme falls asleep You can write the lists beforehand and cover them up and then uncover them little by little as you present the joke sentence by sentence. Or you can write each phrase and each word as you present the joke little by little. It’s best for Spanish and English to be in different colors on the list. If you write the phrases and words as you present the joke, this will help you to go slowly, allowing time for the students to process the new material. The lists that you make can be different from these, since you know what your class is very familiar with and what they need to be able to have easily accessible to them. These lists should stay up all the time the class is working on this joke. This is one of several important ways to keep the class fully comprehensible. In addition to these phrases and words, it is important to permanently display a complete list of question words with their English translations so that students can see them any time they need to. They help to make sure that students understand the questions you ask them about the jokes. You ask them lots of questions so that they hear the vocabulary and the structures with understanding many, many times and thereby acquire them. In this joke, these question words are particularly useful: ¿Quién? Who?; ¿Dónde? Where?; y ¿Por qué? Why (keep in mind that questions with ¿Por que?? are usually harder to answer than others). You will need to prepare the students, telling them that they are responsible for doing the following (you will probably have to train them): 1. Not to speak English unless you ask them to trans- late something to English. If they must speak English, they must ask permission, saying, “¿Puedo hablar ingle?s?” 2. In a joke, when you present a new sentence, to exclaim loudly, “¡Oh!” 3. When you ask them a question, to answer it loud and strong. The Presentation of a Joke Sentence by Sentence Before saying a sentence, if it contains something the class is not very familiar with, point to this on the board and say it. If necessary, explain it briefly in English or Spanish. If you notice that a student has not understood something that is not on the board, add this to the list along with its translation. If something new appears, write this too with its translation on a new list. For example, if someone wants to talk about the make of the car in this joke, you would write “marca make, brand”.
