Childhood Listening - Spanish


http://www.coerll.utexas.edu/spintx/player/1569

The University of Texas at Austin provides a lot of listening videos by native speakers. While they are not technically authentic resources because they are made for learning environments, they are excellent resources to use in levels 1-3 of Spanish. The activities would be changed to match the level.

In this video, a woman from El Salvador talks about her life when she was a child. Childhood being a common theme in level 2, you could guide your students through the following sequence of activities using this video clip.


  • Make sure you are at a place in your unit or teaching where you have taught the two past tenses (preterite & imperfect) and that the students know basic vocabulary relating to childhood (crecer, cuidar, campo, ayudar, nacer, ser, etc.)
  • Show your students the title of the video: Crecí en el campo, entre animales and have them guess what the video is going to be about (make predictions).
  • Show students the video.
  • Have students turn & talk to identify key vocabulary words that they heard.
  • Play video a second time.
  • Have students summarize video content to a partner (turn & talk).
  • Give students some questions such as ¿Cómo se llama la chica? ¿Cuántos años tiene? ¿De dónde es? ¿Qué hacía de niña? ¿Dónde creció? etc.
  • Play the video a third time.
  • Have students answer the questions individually after.
  • Have students compare answers with a partner or go over as a class.


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