L. A. Pinel

Dalí Concocts a ‘Liquid Desire’ of Language and Culture at the National Gallery of Victoria

In Culture, Education, Foreign Language Learning, Language, Language learning, Second Language Learning, Spanish, Spanish Language Learning on July 28, 2009 at 4:30 pm

Last Sunday I went with my advanced Spanish class to see “Liquid Desire” an exhibition of an extensive collection of works of art by Salvador Dalí the celebrated Spanish surrealist artist at the National Gallery of Victoria. A full range of programs of this exhibition can be found at ngv.vic.gov.au/dali.

This exhibition has brought to Melbourne many of Dalí’s work belonging to all the periods of his long and illustrious career. There are many things that I’d like to write about this prolific and complex artist and his work but I rather leave that for another occasion. What I want to concentrate on this post is about the language learning opportunities that exhibitions such as this can present for the Spanish student.

There are many ways to use works of art for language learning and teaching. In fact the National Gallery of Victoria runs special programs for schools. Tres Culturas Spanish was invited to participate in the educational programs organised for this particular exhibition.

Apart from those special programs, there are an immense amount of language activities that can be carried out based on art exhibitions. It is up to the teacher’s own creativity and imagination and the student’s enthusiasm to make the most of this particular learning field.

Students can write little essays in Spanish about the life of Salvador Dalí. Do an internet research in Spanish about any particular area of his personal or artistic life. They can go to the local library and try to find if they have any literature about the artist; or they may like to translate a small article or essay into Spanish. These are only some examples the list may go on and on.

For students with a high level of language proficiency it is possible to organise lessons that focus on oral work. Each student can talk about what he knows about the artistic work of Salvador Dalí or make a list of things about him that they would like to know more about, like the years he spent in exile in the United States; his collaboration with other artists or the very special relationship he maintained with Gala, his wife.

At the actual exhibition the teacher can use the names and titles of the art works as a further learning practice. For example finding out why a name or tittle is said in different ways in English and Spanish. Students can also write a list of terms that they encounter during their viewing at the exhibition and bring them to class for further analyses and discussion.

Finally, illustration of works by Dalí obtained during the visit to the exhibition can be used to create real or fictional stories about the artist, his life and times. The teacher can direct the students to write more complex stories or essays about the topic.

Salvador Dalí Liquid Desire is at the National Gallery of Victoria until October 4.

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The charming softness of the Spanish sound patterns

In Education, Foreign Language Learning, Language, Language learning, Learning Process, Phonetics & Phonology, Second Language Learning, Spanish, Spanish Language Learning on July 17, 2009 at 3:48 pm

One of the nicest rewards of teaching a language is to be complemented by your students about aspects not directly connected to you as a teacher but to the language that they’re learning from you.

It happens to me quite often. One of such rewarding aspects relates to comments they make about the nature of the Spanish sounds; as it happened during the development of a lesson today, while going over the standard pronunciation of some words, one of my students mentioned to me how interesting and ‘nice to the ear’ are the Spanish sounds when spoken loudly.

Getting to a situation were a student can make comments about the nature of the sounds of the language they’re studying tells a lot about how well they’re making progress in mastering basic aspects of their learning process.

The student that I’m making reference to here has clearly been able to understand how consonant and vowels when combined to form Spanish words change according to certain inherent properties attached to a particular letter whether they are a consonant or a vowel.

Consonant letters in Spanish have a soft sound when they are used between two vowels – in the words abeja, guayaba, envergadura, ataviada, alabado or escalada for example, all the consonants between vowels, are pronounced in a very soft manner.

For the words from above, the sounds of the b of abeja, the v of ataviada and the d of envergadura lend to these words certain phonological properties that change their particular nature. This produces very soft oral structures that create a feeling of auditory softness when they are pronounced in a loud voice.

Understanding how the consonant sounds mix with vowels within the basic language structures – nouns, verbs, pronouns, adjectives, etc, is for me a very delicate but appropriate area to start phonological work with any student that may be unfamiliar with the nature of the Spanish sounds.

Students can obtain great benefit in acquiring the standard basic aspects of Spanish phonology by focussing in an analytical way on the individual structure of the lexical repertoire that they are learning in the classroom, namely, to be observant about the way that any word is written and pronounced. To do this they need to have a good understanding of all the basic phonological properties attached to the sounds used in Spanish words.

As I have written elsewhere here, students must be able to relate and use the basic symbols of the International Phonetic Alphabet in order to be able to succeed in their endeavour to become fluent, intelligible speakers of the charming Spanish language.

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The pronunciation and written patterns of letter g in Spanish

In Education, Foreign Language Learning, Language, Language learning, Learning Process, Phonetics & Phonology, Second Language Learning, Spanish, Spanish Language Learning on June 25, 2009 at 3:49 pm

Getting to know the correct way of pronouncing and using the different written patterns in which letter g is used can be an arduous task for the beginner learner of Spanish.  In my classroom experience I have found that most students can get quite confused about the correct pronunciation of the sounds represented by this letter. Most of their confusion tends to arise from their lack of a detailed knowledge regarding the phonological nature of g.

Letter g possesses three basic sounds: /g/ / γ/ and /x/ – represented here in the International Phonetic Alphabet (API) symbols. It requires a good amount of classroom work for the beginner student to get to correctly use these three sounds.

In general terms, /g/ is used when letter g is found in the written patterns: ga, go, gu, gue, gui, güe, and güi placed in initial positions like in gato, goma, gula, guerra, guiso, güero and güisquil. This sound can also be found in structures where the written patterns we are referring to here are preceded by a consonant sound as in the words ángulo, gorgojo or engalanar.

The sound / γ/ can be found in the written patterns that have been described above -  ga, go, gu, gue, gui, güe, and güi – when they are preceded by a vowel as in the words agarrar, egoísta, cigüeña and gigante.

Letter g is pronounced as /x/ when it is found in the written patterns ge and gi, like in the words gemela, ángel or ingeniero.

The /x/ sound for g as used by Spanish is mainly an unfamiliar sound connected with this letter, as for the majority of speakers of other languages learning Spanish, the phoneme /x/ is applied to other letters. On top of this learners must also come to terms with the sound of letter j in Spanish, which is also/x/.

The triple phonological values of the Spanish g – two of them quite often unknown for beginner learners – and the complexities of the written and sound patterns of the structures, in which they are found, contribute to make the learning of the correct usage of this letter quite difficult, according to my own classroom experience.

Students of the Spanish language at the beginner level need to learn to use these sounds with the help of a professional language teacher or a linguist that can provide them with sufficient oral practice and written exercises of each sound.

Without an early intervention, learners may acquire wrong phonological traits when making use of the sounds of g in their oral language. I have taught many students that even though they may be quite fluent in their spoken Spanish, still do repeatedly improper use of the sounds of this letter.

Getting to master the written patterns of letter g and their accompanying sounds, is without doubt one of the most difficult hurdles that the beginner learner needs to get through in order to be able to become a competent user of spoken and written Spanish.

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