Más que hablar: Cortometrajes para la comunicación

Paloma Lapuerta, Central Connecticut State University
Series Editor, LingroHub for Advanced Spanish: Judith Liskin-Gasparro, University of Iowa, Emerita

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A first! New, fully digital Más que hablar inspires students to strengthen their communication skills as they watch, discuss, analyze, and write about award-winning short films from across the Spanish-speaking world.

MULTI-SKILLS FOCUS

Written by an educator with decades of experience motivating students in conversation and composition courses, Más que hablar engages students with authentic films that represent the cultural richness of the Spanish-speaking world, to strengthen their listening, speaking, and writing skills.

ENGAGING AND AUTHENTIC SHORT FILMS

The twelve short films, many of which are award winners, have been carefully selected for their quality, cultural interest, and range of regional varieties of Spanish. Current, engaging, and thought-provoking, they demonstrate the vibrancy and diversity of language and culture.

PROMOTES ACTIVE COLLABORATION

Students collaborate through a multi-stage process of familiarization, comprehension, analysis, interpretation, and application to enhance:

their involvement in the recognition of audiovisual cues;
their critical study of the linguistic, cultural, and contextual features of the cortos;
their capacity to re-contextualize and create new meanings related to personal life experiences

EXTENSIVE,CAREFULLY SEQUENCED ACTIVITIES

Carefully sequenced activities accompany each corto to:
- introduce students to the thematic and linguistic contexts;
- focus their attention on themes and discourse as students analyze and interpret films;
- extend and apply student knowledge beyond the context of the films.

Students begin with activities designed to be completed outside of class. These online previewing and post-viewing activities are self-correcting to provide students with immediate feedback. Students activate vocabulary, make predictions, define words and concepts, recall information, and identify cinematic features.
To spark in-class discussion, instructors choose activities that best suit the abilities of their students. Open-ended in-class activities focus on key concepts. They ask students to make connections between images and dialogue, identify cultural differences and nuances, explore different perspectives, analyze short clips, interpret words and actions of characters, and perform scenes.
Ultimately, students complete a series of activities after class that further develop their critical thinking skills and ability to make connections. Students are asked to summarize, describe, appraise, critique, build an argument, interpret, reflect, and create.