News article: appeal + subjunctive for influence

Popping in quickly to share an article with a lot of youth appeal (I mean, it has juventud in the article) and some subjunctive for influence.


You'll find it here on univision.com.

A song with 17 verbs in past subjunctive

Past subjunctive is not the easiest thing to find in a song, much less several repetitions of it.  I blogged a bit about a couple of songs that do it, but I this song just crossed my radar and wow, what a gem for past subjunctive.  It has 17 verbs in the past subjunctive, 8 of them unique.  They're almost all part of unreal if clauses, and the cool thing is that you can see the use of the concept without the actual word 'if,' something that's not taught in textbooks. (Again, textbooks fail us.)

As an added benefit, you have 'quiera' as  subjunctive by reason of indefinite antecedent (for a better song for that, see this post).  Thanks Carlos Vives (@carlosylaprovin on Twitter) for injecting some fun in one of the hardest concepts in the Spanish language.

Como Tú

Carlos Vives

Tú no sabes lo que diera
si me vieras y dijeras tú,
que no sabes que yo quiero
que mi vida la quisieras tú,
si supieras que me gustan
son las cosas que prefieres tú,
que quisiera que los hijos
que tengamos fueran como tú.

Como tú, la primavera.
Como tú, la vez primera.
No haya nadie que me quiera.
Como tú, mi vida entera.

Tú, tú, tú, mi vida entera.
Tú, tú, tú, mi vida entera.

Me perdonas si yo insisto,
que mi vida la quisieras tú.
Que de todas las estrellas
que yo he visto, la más linda, tú.
Si supieras que me gustan
son las cosas que prefieres tú.
Que quisiera que los hijos
que tengamos fueran como tú.

(coro otra vez)

Si las noticias fueran como tú.
Y las ciudades fueran como tú.
Y si las calles fueran como tú.
Y si mi jefe fuera como tú.
Y si mi vida fuera como tú.
Y mis canciones fueran como tú.
Y si la guerra fuera como tú,

No habría problema todos como tú

(coro y tag otra vez)

Two songs + resources for Ojalá + subjunctive

The word Ojalá is, in my estimation, the only 'verb' in Spanish that isn't conjugated. It finds its roots in Arabic, meaning "May allah grant that." In any case, in Spanish it's always followed by subjunctive, and here are two songs to help work with that.

The first is with present, Ojalá que llueva café, by Juan Luis Guerra. It's one of those songs that can lead you in a hundred different directions. It's a bit controversial from what I understand, and is a perspective on the life of the poor in the Dominican Republic.

I found some interesting blogging on the song. For example, read what José has to say about the song and its meaning. Then, use this cool site by Ms. Nelson to work with the song, complete with lyrics linked to pictures to aid in comprehension.
I just found out that the song was re-recorded by Café Tacvba, with some killer fiddling:


The other song unfortunately does not have much in the way of resources but is the best I've heard to work with Ojalá + past subjunctive or just past subjunctive by itself (Si volvieras a mí by Josh Groban is beautiful to me but not so appealing to most of my high-schoolers). It's Ojalá pudiera borrarte by Maná. The video used to be on YouTube but was removed, and now is only available in cheesy photo collages, especially since I can't get imeem to search anything at the moment.

Ojalá que you enjoy them.

Story and songs for subjunctive: indefinite/negative antecedent

Subjunctive by reason of indefinite or negative antecedent... doesn't that sound fun? This is my story for this reason of subjunctive. We do this in the spring semester of Spanish 2.
Our principal wakes up in the morning and goes to school. He asks the woman at the front desk, "I'm looking for the student who... (fill in talents of students in your class)" Ex: "Busco al estudiante que toca la guitarra mejor que Santana." (This is diagrammed/drawn on the left of the board.)
The woman at the front desk doesn't know (name). She calls the teacher over the intercom and says, "Do you have a student who... (toque la guitarra mejor que Santana)." (This is diagrammed/drawn in the middle.)
The teacher in the classroom has no clue who (name) is. She says, "There's no student here who (toque la guitarra mejor que Santana)."
We go through the sequence for at least 3, preferably four talents. By the third, maybe by the second, students should be making the subjunctive switch for you, especially if you write the final vowels in the verbs in a different color, even though they don't know why.
At the end of the story, it turns out that the reason none of the students were at the school was that (principal) was at (rival school), and actually it was all a dream!
After the story, I draw a head with a check mark on the left, a head with a question mark in the middle, a head with an X on the right. Students fairly readily grasp, "En su mente, sí existe." "En su mente, ¿existe esa persona? No sabe." "En su mente, la persona no existe."

The two songs that go along with this are La Traviesa by Juan Luis Guerra, and Esto es lo que soy by Jesse y Joy.

Remember to ask, ask, ask. If you present them with the input the right way, they'll figure it out themselves, but you can't assume they know it until they tell you so.

Most of all, have fun and make it fun. Fun = motivating.

A new smash hit with a subjunctive benefit

Hey, my title rhymes. :-D

Luis Fonsi has a new(ish) song out that actually hit the Billboard Top 100. It's kind of slow but very catchy. The song is called No Me Doy Por Vencido, and incidentally the video is pretty good too (and 100% legal, yay!). In one part in the chorus, the verb 'buscar' triggers 3 subjunctive verbs because he doesn't know if the woman he's looking for exists or not. Enjoy it and share!

Subjunctive for doubt: Story, song, activity

One of my problems with standard curriculum is they can't provide enough variety in activities focused on one issue. They try, I'll give the writers credit for that, but there are only so many textbook/workbook exercises you can design to elicit subjunctive for doubt. And really, do we believe that those cheesy textbook videos offer enough patterned input for them to understand anything except how bad the acting is?

So I don't use a textbook. My lesson activities include stories, drawings, writing, songs, and, occasionally, a game. This is what we've been doing for subjunctive by reason of a verb following an expression of doubt.

STORY:
Two students in the class were talking. A boy and a girl. Who are they? (the students decide) They aren't big though. They're small. They're not in high school. They're in preschool. It was a long time ago.
What were they talking about? Their hermanos? No. Their mamás? No. They were talking about their papás.
The boy said, "MY papá goes to China every month."
The girl said, "I doubt that your papá goes to China every month. MY papá has 15 birds in his bedroom."
And we continued with different phrases. I organized it by putting two speech bubbles beside each character on the board. The top speech bubbles were for what they said about their papás. The bottom speech bubbles were what they said to doubt the other person's statement. We used places around our area and vocab we've worked on lately, but you can make up anything. As long as it's interesting and relevant, they'll stay focused. And mine picked up the pattern by the 4th or 5th doubt statement and were able to change the verbs themselves. Our statements were:
MY papá...
...lives in Bernheim Forest
...knows President Obama
...gives me chocolates for breakfast
...dies when he eats shellfish
...can walk 15 miles
...can drive his Corvette 100mph

(At the end we added that they both said "I want your dad to come to Show n Tell" to rehash a subjunctive for influence example.)

The next day, our song was No Sé Si Pueda by Fonseca. You can listen to the song on YouTube but there's no video for it. It's a good example of subjunctive for doubt.

The day after that, we played "two truths and a lie." I divided the class in half, and each person wrote 3 statements, 2 true and 1 false, in no particular order. (I collected these afterward for a 10-point completion/effort grade.) The team got a point if the other team could not guess which one was the lie. Then, we put "dudamos que..." in front of the one the majority had thought was the lie, and they told me what else in the sentence had to change and why.

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.

One more song for subjunctive

There's another song that's great for so many reasons--by far one of my students' favorites: La llave de mi corazón by Juan Luis Guerra. His music and lyrics are positive and upbeat and the codeswitching (mixing languages) fascinates my students, who often enter my class thinking bilingualism is weird and there aren't any cool people who speak two languages. (Side note, the song's also been recorded in Portuguese.)

I blogged about La llave de mi corazón last year in this post but not specifically for subjunctive. It's by reason of influence after a subject change and there are several good examples. Enjoy--it's a great tune!

A couple more subjunctive songs

Someone landed on my blog a little while ago by searching for good subjunctive songs, so I thought I'd post a couple more I've run across. One is the song "Todo Cambió," the title track to Camila's debut CD. That's them in the photo. The subjunctive is following the word antes for something in the future. The music video isn't one I find worth showing--seems like the woman finds out she's pregnant, has the baby, and it's pretty big by the end of the video, without understanding how the song relates. But, they performed the song on the 2007 Latin Grammy awards and that's a better video. Incidentally it's also a really good example of pronouncing the 'v' as a 'b.'

In case you're wondering, they're not nearly as rough as they look. ;o)

Also, the song No Te Pido Flores by Fanny Lu. It's awesome for subjunctive used over and over again by reason of change of subject with influence in the first verb. The official music video for this one I also don't show, because of the clothes she wears and the way she dances in the happy parts. The Colombian version is much better. You really cannot beat this song for subjunctive for influence.

Great new song for subjunctive

I just got this new song, La frase tonta de la semana, by the group La 5a Estación.

The woman in the middle does pretty much all the vocals, and the guys play the guitar. The video is pretty good, though not the most interesting in the world. (She likes to change outfits a lot in her videos--LOL)

Anyway, this new song, aside from being really pretty, has a ton of subjunctive, most of it for two reasons--after cuando for something in the future, and after different phrases for something doubtful.

I've found that it's helpful for a song to keep repeating something as difficult as subjunctive for just one or two reasons, rather than jumping around all the myriad reasons to use it. Or, at least, if it does use it for more reasons, I only talk about a couple.

Incidentally, another great song for subjunctive, with a neat video to go along with it, is La travesia by Juan Luis Guerra. The song uses present perfect too, but the best part is the rapid switch between indicative --for the woman he loves-- and subjuctive --for the woman who doesn't exist-- so it's subjunctive by reason of nonexistent antecedent, right before the exact same verb that's indicative for the opposite reason. (See, I do know all the terms--I just don't speak them aloud in the classroom, haha.)