Negative commands + culture

Here's a short videoclip of Hugo Chávez continuing his usual rhetoric, now against President Obama, lest anyone think there would be any change in his behavior. It's no secret in my classes that I'm no fan of Chávez (or Obama for that matter, but I digress). Fortunately he provides us with lots of fodder for keeping up on Latin American politics and staying amused at the same time. I can't wait to see what circus act he'll pull at the Summit of the Americas. Anyway, in addition to providing some cultural material, the clip uses several negative usted commands. Negative commands is what Chávez does best, after all. ;-)

Here's a question to mull over: how many high school Spanish students do you think can name one Latin American president?

Mine can name at least two--Chávez and Uribe. I need to work on that. They need to know the presidents of Mexico, Ecuador, and Argentina as well if I want to say they're really up-to-date on their politics in the Americas.

Good stories for commands

Here are a couple of good stories to use when teaching commands.

En aquel prado is a book I actually start using the first week of Spanish 1 to practice numbers, but the best use of it is for commands. The most repetition is in uds and nosotros commands, although with the first animal there is a tú command. Fun to get a little loco with and make animal noises and change your voice for the baby animals. What happens is, the mom tells the babies (in increasing numbers) to do something, and then they all say "Let's ----!" Wonderfully repetitive.

¡Muy bien, Fergus! is a good one for tú commands. Everyone can relate with trying to train a dog. There are a good 5 or 6 commands in there, at least. And it's cute. :)

Incidentally, if you can put up with RBD, their Pepsi commercial from Christmas before last also has a lot of tú commands. And telling RBD's story to teenagers is always fun & funny. Univision has a couple of good videos showing teenagers marching in protest, in tears, against their breakup. SO funny.

A song for subjunctive/nosotros commands

There's a really odd technopop group out of Argentina that became somewhat a suprise hit in the last two years. The band is called Miranda! and I use one of their songs--once a year only in Spanish 2 and 3--for 'we' commands. I really don't like technopop, and this song gets on my nerves like no other, and I dislike the whole hidden-love theme (although the video clears that up a bit). I'd rather listen to Enrique sing Dímelo than listen to this one. But, I've never seen anything with better lyrics to show the use of subjunctive in 'we' commands, and some of my students actually do like it. So, if you can stand it, here it is--Yo te diré by Miranda! The music video is actually quite funny; think Grease meets West Side Story meets Romeo and Juliet. Enjoy.