What makes "Spanish 5" Spanish 5 and what songs can help us teach it?

As my students prepare for the March Exam at our school—equivalent to a comprehensive or final exam given in March—I couldn’t help, but wonder how to prepare my kids better to perform beautifully, without teaching them to the exam. Spanish 5 is different than Spanish 4, because of the vocabulary and grammar structures that the kids study. Spanish 5 is an extension of what they have already studied in Spanish 1, Spanish 2, Spanish 3, and Spanish 4, and it is different from AP Spanish, because of the different ways students engage in studying vocabulary and grammar structures for the AP Spanish Exam. Let’s face it. An AP Spanish class is all about the AP Spanish Exam, that is, students answer a lot of multiple choice questions of print and print and audio texts and write numerous e-mails and persuasive essays in the classroom, as well as they complete several simulated conversations and make cultural comparisons at the language lab. But I am here to talk about Spanish 5, not AP Spanish. So what makes this class different from others?

When I was preparing study guides for my guides, they were not surprised when I gave the two sets of packages, one entitled Guía de estudio de Español 4 and another one entitled Guía de estudio de Español 5. They were not surprised, not only because they know how demanding I am as a teacher, but also because both of these study guides summarize the grammar structures that students enrolled in a Spanish 5 class should know. Spanish 5 students should know all of the vocabulary and grammar structures studied in the previous four years.

According to the Association of Teachers of Spanish and Portuguese, which administers the National Spanish Exam every year from March to April, there are for Spanish 4 certain specifications for vocabulary and grammar. In terms of vocabulary, kids should know vocabulary from levels 1, 2, and 3, plus vocabulary about the world (geographical names, nature and environment, and universe), leisure time (weather and cultural entertainment), family and home (description, beliefs, ideas, and doctrines), school and education (educational terms), travel and transportation (advanced expressions for travel), meeting personal needs (food, clothing, types of doctors, names of body systems, illness and accidents, economics, and world currencies), world of work (the post office, banking, and types of computer programs), history, politics, and social issues (history and historical terms, government and politics, forms of government and political systems, political ideology, elections, global problems and elections, ideas, and philosophies), and fine arts (art terminology, architecture, periods of art history, painting, elements of music and musical instruments, elements of literature, and basic journalism terms). In terms of grammar, kids should know everything from levels 1, 2, and 3, and more, including nouns and articles (nouns whose meaning in determined by gender, use of the definite article with modified proper nouns, and the neuter article lo), adjectives (adjectives whose meaning changes depending upon position, recognition of ordinals above 10th, nominalization of adjectives), verbs (present indicative, future used to express probability or wonderment in the present, conditional used to express probability or wonderment in the past, future perfect, conditional perfect, use of subjunctive in adverbial clauses, use of subjunctive after a negative antecedent, use of subjunctive after a indefinite antecedent, imperfect subjunctive, sequences of tenses, the use of quisiera to express the conditional, if clauses, past present subjunctive, and plural reflexive verbs used to express each other), relative and reciprocal pronouns, and conjunctions (subordinating conjunctions always followed by the subjunctive, subordinating conjunctions that may folllowed by the subjunctive, and conjunctions ending in –quiera).

If we take a look at what the kids should know at the 5 and 6 level of the National Spanish Exam, then we will see that they will need to know vocabulary including the world (environment and green issues, basic biology terms, basic chemistry terms, and basic physic terms), leisure time (cultural entertainment and pastimes), family and home (description and words used to describe regional origin), school and education (advanced expressions for education and learning), travel and transportation (advanced terms and expressions for travel), meeting personal needs (culinary terms, medical terms and terminology, hospital, treatments for medical issues, and pharmacy), world of the work (communication media, actions associated with using computers, the Internet and virtual communities, and terms associated with advertising and marketing), history, politics, and social issues (history and historical terms, law and justice, crime and punishment, and global problems and social issues), and fine arts (fine arts, musical notation, aspects of literature, and journalism). As for grammar structures, kids are expected to demonstrate application of advanced grammatical concepts. Topics tested at this level include everything form the previous four levels presented in a more complex from through more sophisticated and idiomatic contexts.

"Today we finished the textbook for Spanish 5. We have covered in less than a semester what kids usually do in a whole school year. Now we are starting to read short literary texts. These kids will be more than ready for any Spanish class in college!" (Taken on February 17, 2016 and published on St. Luke's School Facebook Wall)

So how do I help my Spanish 5 kids to work on their listening, speaking, reading, and writing skills, so that they can be successful when it comes to perform on a comprehensive exam, such as the March Exam or the National Spanish Exam?

In our class, we used the textbook, Revista: Conversación sin barreras (2014), edited by José Blanco and published by Vista Higher Learning. As the book advertises in his cover, it provides students with short-films, humoristic cartoons, debates, articles, editorials, and much more. This book has helped me out reviewing some of the grammar structures that are covered in the Spanish 5 curriculum, such as uses of ser, uses of estar, ser and estar with adjectives, prepositions, verbs followed by prepositions, prepositional phrases, por and para, uses of the preterite, uses of the imperfect, uses of the preterite and imperfect together, verbs with different meanings in the preterit and imperfect, the preterite perfect, the preterite pluperfect, the direct object pronouns, the indirect object pronouns, uses of direct and indirect object pronouns together, prepositional pronouns, the position of adjectives, comparatives and superlatives, the subjunctive in noun clauses, the subjunctive in impersonal clauses, types and uses of relative pronouns, relative pronouns with prepositions, relative adverbs, the subjunctive in adjective clauses, the subjunctive in adverb clauses, passive voice, se in passive constructions, passive voice with se and other structures, si with indicative, si with subjunctive, and other expressions with the conditional tense, reflexive and reciprocal se, and se in impersonal sentences.

Besides the study guides that is a compilation of activities and exercises from different Spanish textbooks with which I have provided my students, I have used authentic materials to practice some of these grammar structures. Here are the songs I have used in the classroom to review such grammar paradigms before the exam. Given their level of complexity and difficulty, I have grouped a series of songs to practice the preterite, the imperfect, and the subjunctive.

Songs to review the preterite:

Luis Fonsi’s Corazón en la maleta

Joaquín Sabina’s Y nos dieron la diez

Shakira's Antología

Songs to review the preterite and the imperfect:

Mecano’s Laika

Estopa’s La raja de tu falda

Songs to review the subjunctive:

Luis Miguel’s La media vuelta

Luis Miguel's El día que me quieras

Juanes’s A Dios le pido

Luz Casal's Piensa en mí

Manuel Carrasco and Malú’s Que nadie

Silvio Rodríguez’s Ojalá

Juan Luis Guerra’s Ojalá que llueva café

Joaquín Sabina’s Noches de boda

Shakira’s Que me quedes tú

Fonseca's Te mando flores

Melendi's Tu jardín con enanitos

El sueño de Morfeo’s Para toda la vida

Juan Luis Guerra’s Quisiera

Ella baila sola’s Y quisiera

Alejandro Sanz’s Quisiera

Kids love singing! And there are no other tool like real songs that allow them to develop their listening skills, while they learn new vocabulary, internalize grammar structures, and have fun singing in the classroom!

Please feel free to share any ideas or suggestions that you may have.