Learning Spanish with Music When I was 14, I picked up Christina Aguilera’s Spanish-language CD “Mi Reflejo” (My Reflection) and I became interested in learning Spanish. Equipped with a Spanish-English dictionary I started learning some vocabulary and I was able to sing al

Eek! I have no vocabulary! This weekend I traveled to El Chorro (“the Spurt”) in southern Spain to do some rock climbing. Two days before I went, I realized that I knew very little Spanish climbing vocabulary. Communication between climbing partners is important, and often

Authentic Cultural Materials for Spanish Teachers and Learners What is it? Zambombazo is a self-described “explosion of language and culture”. It is a website which offers hundreds of activities for Spanish learners and teachers that are based on authentic cultural materia

How much do we know about other places and their languages? After three days on this Mediterranean island off the coast of Spain, I meet a woman who resembles neither the average local Mallorcan nor the average European tourist. She says that she is from Bolivia, and has been working

A Fun Activity for Progressive Spanish Students While living in Vancouver, I ran a monthly Spanish for Social Justice Conversation Group – a space for students to practice conversational Spanish while discussing social justice issues and solidarity with Spanish-speakers. One of

Fun and Frustration with the Spanish Language Like other global languages, there are many different varieties of Spanish spoken throughout the world. While the general structure of the language doesn’t change too much from one country to the next, the accents and especially the

Simple Social Justice Lessons from the Spanish Classroom In earlier blog posts, Mary and I have described what we mean by Progressive Language Teaching and Social Justice Education. Today I would like to share a few examples of how I teach Spanish for social justice. It’s actually qui

Understanding Bilingual Children – Why Spanglish is Okay Step 1 in Dr. Steiner’s book, 7 Steps to Raising a Bilingual Child is all about understanding bilingualism and laying a foundation. This seems like a very logical place to begin. And she, as many other authors have d

Avoiding Sexist Vocabulary in a Gendered Language In Spanish, all nouns and adjectives are assigned a gender, also referred to as grammatical gender. We have grammatical gender in English as well (for example, we say “he” or “she”, “boy” or “girl”, etc) but in Spanish even inanimate o

This is the first of my posts about raising our daughter in a bilingual environment and I have decided to include a Spanish version below to be able to share my experiences with Spanish-speaking parents who would like to raise their children bilingually. I began actually researching h