# Spanish-English intercambio activities



## AllHeart (Nov 22, 2013)

I belong to an English-Spanish intercambio language club, and we're looking for activities to do with the group, and I'm hoping someone has suggestions. We have talks followed by discussion on various subjects on Tuesdays, but on Fridays we don't have anything structured yet.

Here's one that worked out really well yesterday. The Spaniards read this, and we corrected mistakes. We had quite a few laughs over the pronunciations. All in fun, of course.


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## AllHeart (Nov 22, 2013)

I forgot to post the poem:

*HINTS ON PRONUNCIATION FOR FOREIGNERS*

I take it you already know
Of tough and bough and cough and dough?
Others may stumble, but not you
On hiccough, thorough, laugh and through?
Well done! And now you wish perhaps
To learn of these familiar traps?

Beware of heard, a dreadful word,
That looks like beard and sounds like bird,
And dead: it’s said like bed, not bead,
For Goodness’ sake, don’t call it deed!
Watch out for meat and great and threat,
They rhyme with suite and straight and debt.

A moth is not a moth in mother
Nor both in bother, broth in brother,
And here is not a match for there,
Nor dear and fear for bear and pear,
And then there’s does and rose and lose-
Just look them up: and goose and choose.

And cork and front and word and ward
And font and front and word and sword.
And do and go and thwart and cart-
Come, come, I’ve hardly made a start!
A dreadful language! Man Alive,
I’d mastered it when I was five.

~Anonymous


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## Pesky Wesky (May 10, 2009)

AllHeart said:


> I forgot to post the poem:
> 
> *HINTS ON PRONUNCIATION FOR FOREIGNERS*
> 
> ...


So mean to start with such a difficult task!

You could ask each other about their home towns/ countries. 5 min talks, or half prepare mini talks, half prepare questions (which are easy to answer)to ask about the places.
Play Scrabble in teams, Pictionary , Tabú is hilarious.
Cooking together if someone has a big house or split into pairs, cook together then come together the next day to present and taste each others dishes...


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## mrypg9 (Apr 26, 2008)

Talk about things that interest you specifically. The single most important factor in increasing my fluency (if not grammatical correctness) in Spanish was starting up my main UK interests , political and trades union activities again.
Not only does this help with speaking, as if you are involved in a topic that interests you, you'll want to contribute to debate, it helps with the most difficult part of language learning, listening to and understanding a native speaker. It's easier to tune in because of shared context.
I find that people are interested in how things are done in other countries so they are eager to hear what you have to say, as long, obviously, as you don't tell them that we do them better in the UK, USA, Canada wherever, although it often seems that is the case
That worked better for me than an intercambio which to me would be a bit too stilted and unspontaneous but I admit I don't really know what I'm talking about there as I haven't been to one. I know what worked for me, may do for others, maybe not.
Most towns have clubs/societies for different interests/activities. Our town has a kind of Women's Institute I'm joining. They don't just make jam etc. they are socially and culturally active, 100% Spanish speaking.


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## AllHeart (Nov 22, 2013)

Pesky Wesky said:


> So mean to start with such a difficult task!
> 
> You could ask each other about their home towns/ countries. 5 min talks, or half prepare mini talks, half prepare questions (which are easy to answer)to ask about the places.
> Play Scrabble in teams, Pictionary , Tabú is hilarious.
> Cooking together if someone has a big house or split into pairs, cook together then come together the next day to present and taste each others dishes...


Yes, it was difficult, but there's a really hard one they threw at the English too:

El cielo está enladrillado
¿quién lo desenladrillará?
el desenladrillador
que lo desenladrille,
buen desenladrillador será.

:confused2: I couldn't say that for the life of me!

I like your ideas. Thank you!  We're meeting in a hotel meeting room, so can't be too rowdy. I love Pictionary but I think that would be too loud. I'll ask the leader on Friday about games though. I also like the idea of cooking together, but we wouldn't be able to bring it into the hotel. It might be something that we could do anyway. I'll suggest that. We could talk about our cooking experiences together. I also like the idea of talking about our home countries. What kinds of questions and topics would you suggest?


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## AllHeart (Nov 22, 2013)

mrypg9 said:


> Talk about things that interest you specifically. The single most important factor in increasing my fluency (if not grammatical correctness) in Spanish was starting up my main UK interests , political and trades union activities again.
> Not only does this help with speaking, as if you are involved in a topic that interests you, you'll want to contribute to debate, it helps with the most difficult part of language learning, listening to and understanding a native speaker. It's easier to tune in because of shared context.
> I find that people are interested in how things are done in other countries so they are eager to hear what you have to say, as long, obviously, as you don't tell them that we do them better in the UK, USA, Canada wherever, although it often seems that is the case
> That worked better for me than an intercambio which to me would be a bit too stilted and unspontaneous but I admit I don't really know what I'm talking about there as I haven't been to one. I know what worked for me, may do for others, maybe not.
> Most towns have clubs/societies for different interests/activities. Our town has a kind of Women's Institute I'm joining. They don't just make jam etc. they are socially and culturally active, 100% Spanish speaking.


I belong to clubs that are for specific interests, but the focus of this group is language exchange, so anything can be the topic. Yes, of course there are always people who say it's better in their country, which I think is just plain bad manners. What kinds of topics would you suggest that we discuss when discussing our country of origin?


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## Pesky Wesky (May 10, 2009)

AllHeart said:


> Yes, it was difficult, but there's a really hard one they threw at the English too:
> 
> El cielo está enladrillado
> ¿quién lo desenladrillará?
> ...


Something like this?
Obviously I only have it in English as I don't teach Spanish


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## AllHeart (Nov 22, 2013)

Pesky Wesky said:


> Something like this?
> Obviously I only have it in English as I don't teach Spanish


I triple love that!  That's perfect. Thank you! I've printed it off.


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## Pesky Wesky (May 10, 2009)

How many people go to the meetings approx?


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## AllHeart (Nov 22, 2013)

The norm is 10-20 people


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## Pesky Wesky (May 10, 2009)

OK. A fun thing is "Find someone who..."
Example
Come up with a list of ideas and write them like this
Find someone who...
--- likes gardening
--- enjoys reading detective novels
--- doesn't really like horror films
Then ask each other appropriate questions and discuss the topic. The above examples are to practice likes and preferences so the questions are going to be along the lines of_
Do you like/ enjoy etc xxx???
_At a basic level the conversation will be_ 
Yes, I do, I love it etc, 
_but this can be expanded with 
_because I bla bla bla and I usually bla bla bla_
and a few follow up questions of 
_and when did you, what did you etc
_Then you write the name of the person who you found who likes gardening etc
Have a few different sets of questions so you're not all asking the same questions over and over. This gets people up and walking around and talking. Do you get it?
Another thing you can do to make things a little different is talk about photos, like the attachment below.You can find a theme, or get everyone to take in a photo of something that interests them (as Mrypg9 says following your interests can make learning more enjoyable), but of course not everyone will bring a picture and unfortunately some people will not come just because they forgot to look one out. You could do this in pairs or groups. You could also put a load of pictures around the room and make sentences about them. Put the sentences on strips of paper and put them next to the photo (on the floor or use blu tac). Again good for different levels. At a basic level you can make a sentence like 
_There is a big car in the street_
At a higher level
_If I had a car like this I'd be very happy_
I would avoid talking about holidays as other people's holidays can be deathy boring 

Lastly I've sent you some questions about language learning that might be interesting.

Hope you can see some potential in these ideas that can be tweaked for your group.


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## AllHeart (Nov 22, 2013)

Pesky Wesky, those are excellent ideas too! Thank you so very much. Again, I've printed those off. I spoke tonight at the club with the leader of our Friday group, and he's really excited about these ideas. I'll be presenting them this Friday. So thanks a whole bunch from all of us! What I'm thinking of doing is doing the exercises in English and Spanish. The Spaniards can speak in English and the English in Spanish. I'll get someone to translate what you've provided into Spanish. You're going to be rocking the group! 

P.S. I just noticed your position as Mod. Congratulations! arty:


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## Pesky Wesky (May 10, 2009)

AllHeart said:


> Pesky Wesky, those are excellent ideas too! Thank you so very much. Again, I've printed those off. I spoke tonight at the club with the leader of our Friday group, and he's really excited about these ideas. I'll be presenting them this Friday. So thanks a whole bunch from all of us! What I'm thinking of doing is doing the exercises in English and Spanish. The Spaniards can speak in English and the English in Spanish. I'll get someone to translate what you've provided into Spanish. You're going to be rocking the group!
> 
> P.S. I just noticed your position as Mod. Congratulations! arty:


Well I hope it works out. Sometimes things don't quite go to plan, but these ideas are standard fare for a language teacher. (I have lots of others if you want for the future )
And, yes of course the idea is to translate to Spanish for those who need to practice Spanish. You can probably change a lot of the questions/ ideas to suit your group.


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## AllHeart (Nov 22, 2013)

Pesky Wesky said:


> Well I hope it works out. Sometimes things don't quite go to plan, but these ideas are standard fare for a language teacher. (I have lots of others if you want for the future )
> And, yes of course the idea is to translate to Spanish for those who need to practice Spanish. You can probably change a lot of the questions/ ideas to suit your group.


Yes, I would love to have some more if it's not too much to ask. These are absolutely terrific! Yes, it's a matter of getting things started, so it might change up a bit, but that's okay. What we've been doing to now is just talking about random things, sometimes in a group and sometimes we just naturally bunch together in groups. So we're looking for something to do together as a group, something more focused. So your ideas are right up our alley. Again, thank you for all your help.


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## AllHeart (Nov 22, 2013)

Pesky Wesky, yesterday was my first attendance at the Friday meeting since getting your suggestions. I've had a lot of social things on the go for Fridays of late. So I came in with print-outs of all your suggestions and passed them around. People absolutely, positively loved them! We spent one hour debating this question alone:

*"Fluency in a language is more important than accuracy". Do you agree?*

In fact these suggestions made such a splash that the vice-president got wind of them already and asked me this morning to do a presentation for our Tuesday group.  We'll be doing more of them on a regular basis on the Friday group. 

So once again, thank you so very much for your help! :kiss:


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## webmarcos (Dec 25, 2012)

Some great ideas here, many thanks.


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