I just got back from visiting my dad in Bogot, Colombia. wanted to take as many photos as I could in the short time that I was there to use in the classroom for short cultural minilessons. I write the content on my classroom blog I will share it here. hope you enjoy these Foto Cultura articles. first Foto Cultura article is about La Ciclova in Bogot. Sunday and holidays major streets, avenues and roads are closed from 7 am to 2 pm so that cyclists and runners can practice their sport. Our textbook has a thematic unit on competition and sporting events, and I wanted to pull some authentic material to practice the vocabulary. I was very ugg boots uk surprised that only a handful of students watched or really knew anything about the World Cup, but most were familiar with Waka Waka, the 2010 World Cup theme song by Shakira and Freshlyground. explaining some key vocabulary in the lyrics that were not a part of my students' working vocabulary, the students listened to the song in Spanish and completed a cloze exercise. Partners then worked together to figure out what the lyrics were saying. Together we went over some of the lyrics that were harder to figure out. printed out the song in English so that the students cheap uggs could compare it to the Spanish version as they watched the video.



In class the next day, partners discussed and described what they saw in the video. We then talked about how similar images or ideas in the song were expressed differently in each version of the song. For example, the Spanish version said "Qutate el polvo, ponte de pie y vuelves al ruedo", and the English version said "Pick yourself up, and dust yourself off and back in the saddle". The picking yourself up dusting yourself was almost a word for word translation, but vuelves al ruedo and back in the saddle require cultural and idiomatic knowledge to make sense. I then asked my students to find other lyrics that had similar meaning, but the language used was different. my students move toward intermediate language proficiency, I hope to be able to come back to some of these examples when they run into idiomatic expressions or try to translate language literally. This kind of lesson plan is my favorite kind because there is so much going on, but it flows in a very organic manner. My students are practicing the lesson's vocabulary, analyzing language, listening reading authentic materials and enjoying the music all at the same time.