FL436 / Dr. J.

Smith
David Balmaceda

Level and Age:

Objective:

Task:

Format for Oral Practice Activity

The following speaking activity was designed for novice adult leaners of
Spanish.
Students will be able to:
- Describe their family.
- Give details about themselves and others.
The students will practice the following grammar items taught in class:
-the verbs ser and tener
-definite and indefinite articles
-possessive adjectives
- descriptive adjectives
This activity was divided into 3 stages.
Stage 1:
Students write a 10-sentence paragraph describing their family. They are
assigned to turn in the paragraph at the beginning of class, just right
before the second stage is done in class.
Stage 2:
Students are asked to bring a minimum of two family photos (personal
ones, or taken from the internet or a magazine). They can have them on
any electronic device.
Students are put in groups of 5.
Each member in the group is given a number (from 1-5).
Student 1 starts showing the family photos to the other members in the
group.
All the students in the group ask questions to student 1 about his/her
family members. Each student is assigned to ask 2 questions minimum. For
example:
Quin es l/ella?
Cuntos aos tiene? Cmo se llama?
Podras describir dos personas de tu familia?

While student 1 is answering the questions, the members of the group make
notes to share her/his information with the class later.
The activity goes on until all the members in the group have had a chance
to show their photos and talk about their family.
Stage 3:
By now, it is expected that the students feel more confortable and familiar
about family vocabulary. They then change groups to talk about any of
their classmates family. Students 1, 2 and 3 move to different groups, and
all members in each group start sharing information about someone elses
family.
Follow-up: To increase motivation to complete the tasks, stages 1 and
2 could be graded.
Communicative Mode: Interpersonal Communication
Context:
La Familia

FL436 / Dr. J. Smith

David Balmaceda

Other:

There have been studies that found that there is a possible transfer of skills
from written production to oral expression in the target language.
Therefore, for this speaking task, the students are assigned to first write a
paragraph talking about their family before they do it in class.