El Extraño En La Clase De Español: Parte 2
In our last episode of “El Estrano en la Clase de Espanol,” Peabody’s intrepid 8th graders found themselves unexpectedly trying to solve a mystery. A masked estrano had just pirouetted unexpectedly into the middle of their Spanish class, but who was that estrano, what was he doing there, and where did he get that fabulous robe? Fortunately, they had Profe Emmie “Sherlock” Wright to guide them through the case. She started by asking them some questions about the chain of events they had just witnessed.
Where in the classroom did he go? “¿A cuales partes del salón de clases fue el extraño?”
What did he do when he was here? “¿Qué hizo el extraño cuando estuvo aquí?”
With what hand did he throw and write? “¿Con qué mano tiró y escribió el extraño?”
Whom did he talk to? “¿A quien habló el extraño?”
What did he write? ¿Qué escribió el extraño en la pizarra?
What did he take?
Conveniently but perhaps not accidentally, every one of these questions inquiring about something that happened in the past but is now over calls for what is known in Spanish as the “Preterite tense.” And for learners of Spanish as a second language, it can be notoriously difficult to distinguish when to use this preterite tense and when instead to use a different but similar past tense, the “Imperfect tense.” But after asking students this series of questions about the sequence of events that happened just five minutes ago, Profe began down a different path: “Clase, is that enough for a police report? Don’t we need to describe the stranger, also? Chicos,...
How tall was the stranger? ¿Qué altura tenía el extraño?
What color hair did the stranger have? ¿Qué color de cabello tenía el extraño?
Did the stranger appear to be male or female? ¿El extraño parecía ser hombre o mujer?
What was he wearing? ¿Qué ropa llevaba el extraño?”
These questions also are probing something the students may have remembered from that past experience, but which at the same time were or are in some way continuous. He was about six feet tall, and he still is. He had dark hair and was left-handed, and he still is. He was wearing the robe and mask for the entirety of his visit. Imperfecto!
Profe Wright explains:
“It is so common in Spanish language courses to learn the preterite conjugations and the imperfect conjugations in isolation from one another, and then to be given a set of rules or guidelines to memorize when to use which tense. But for so many Spanish learners, those rules just tend to keep the concept murky; when you conjugate verbs in English, you don’t think back each time to the set of rules governing when to use what, do you? I wanted my students to have the chance to live and experience in a practical (well, kind-of practical) way which parts of a certain experience call for the preterite tense and which parts call for imperfect. And I once got a great tip from a favorite Spanish teacher of mine that I had also to make that experience memorable, so that whenever those students might find themselves trying to determine which tense to use, they will always be able to go back to the vivid memory in which they experienced the two different tenses in one situation. Having a disguised but benevolent stranger appear unexpectedly in the classroom and completely hold their attention for ten minutes felt like a really promising way to make the distinctions about these tenses memorable.”
¡Gracias, Profe! En años pasados, yo estaba confundido, pero en tu clase, finalmente yo entendí.
