Most upper level Spanish students have their basic grammar and vocabulary down, but have trouble with common sayings and expressions used by native Spanish speakers. In class your students may come across these while reading a passage or even by listening to you. This is a Spanish classroom activity to help students understand the meaning of any of these unknown expressions.

When you read a passage in class, have students underline any expression that has not been taught before. Most of the unfamiliar phrases will have verbs that the students do know, but within the expression it does not translate well. I'm thinking of sayings like: "Ponerse las pilas" or "Échale ganas". Many students will recognize the verb "poner" and define it as "to put". This obviously doesn't help to translate "Pónganse las pilas."! For each passage that you read in class your students may find one or two of these expressions. You can even decide which ones you want them to focus on. Write the expression on the board and tell the students what it means, give an example of how it is used and let the class practice it. For homework, or class work if you have computers, tell them to type the expression into Google. Each student is to find five examples of the expression used by a native speaker in a sentence. Let your class know that it may not be the first five results on the search. They may have to dig a little to find some good examples of the expression used within a sentence. Tell your students to jot down these five meaningful examples and to write, in English, the gist of what is being communicated.

In class the next day have your students share with you the different examples they found. You may want to check the sentences before doing this to weed out the obnoxious and obscene examples that they may come across. Write a few of the example sentences on the board and talk about them. Have your students include these expressions in their journal entry that day or come up with some questions that would merit those phrases in the response. These Spanish expressions take a while to learn, but just remind your class that a language is learned through time, repetition and practice!

Anddrew Lawton
http://spanishgrammarlessons.com

I am a Spanish and ESL teacher in Austin, TX. I have a website for students to practice at: http://spanishgrammarlessons.com