Book #2: Bringing Linguistics into the Spanish Language Classroom

Code-switching … The Puerto Rican r … Non-standard Verb forms … Motherese (“baby talk”) … Learning to conjugate … Spanish “Pig Latin” … The mega-preposition en … Multiple ‘you’ pronouns … Preterite and imperfect … Spanish as an Indo-European language … Sources of Spanish words … The extreme irregularity of ser and ir …

This is just a sampling of the topics covered in my new book about Spanish linguistics, Bringing Linguistics into the Spanish Language Classroom: A Teacher’s Guide.  Written specifically for teachers, it is really two obras in one; the book itself and a set of over 300 PowerPoint slides available to download. Teachers will find classroom-ready explanations and slides for each topic covered, as well as instructions and materials for related in-class activities and take-home projects. The book assumes no prior knowledge of linguistics on the part of teachers and their students.

Bringing Linguistics into the Spanish Language Classroom is organized around a novel set of five linguistics-based essential questions:

  1. How is Spanish different from other languages?
  2. How is Spanish similar to other languages?
  3. What are the roots of Spanish?
  4. How does Spanish vary?
  5. How do people learn and use Spanish?

It is available to purchase on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and directly from Routledge. See this post for a link to a favorable review in Hispania, the official journal of the American Association of Teachers of Spanish and Portuguese. Another great review, from the Journal of Linguistics and Language Teaching, is here.

The slides are available to download for free from Routledge even if you don’t buy the book (scroll down to “Support Material”). However, they will be much more effective if you use them while consulting the book.