Teaching and learning materials

This activity is catered for Portuguese Mother Tongue and Spanish Foreign Language (ELE) students of Brazilian origin, who are looking into the peculiarities of the Spanish culture, and are about to get acquainted with the city of Madrid (it doesn´t really matter whether the pupils have already been to the Spanish capital before). But for the merely insight into Madrid, the students are supposed to compare their native culture with the Spanish one, and to get familiarized in such a way with the sociocultural differences that may sound rare. The main practical goal consists in students´ written elaboration of a Madrid guide, with advices and recommendations, for their countrymen who could probably visit the city.
The activity realization requires the previous preparation of iconic documents (some models are available on the link) and the direct access to Internet during the whole lesson for all the students. The introductory part supposes students to recognize Madrid on photos the teacher shows them and to explicit their knowledge and personal ideas about the Spanish capital. The very activity is developed in the way the students learn as much as it´s possible about Madrid´s cultural and artistic heritage, history, geography and social norms of behavior, so that they could form a general idea about the life in Spain.
The author recommends web-sites to be visited throughout the activity and offers the model cards which may be used for the organization of the lesson. The basic principle of this task is to sensitize Brazilians with the norms of behavior in Spain (schedules, timetables, traditions, customs, etc.), to make them compare these norms with those of Brazil, to discuss the results of their work in the classroom and to implement them afterwards in a written form.
The activity in question is oriented on the improvement of the listening comprehension, reading comprehension, written expression and oral interaction of the students of B2 and higher levels. Its realization is supposed to arouse interest in the Brazilian students as Spain is a known dominant target country of their visits.

Approach: Intercultural

Type of material: Iconic documents

Source:
Activity created by Luciana Maria Almeida de Freitas, available on line:
http://cvc.cervantes.es/aula/didactired/anteriores/agosto_08/04082008a.htm