Teaching Compliments and Physical Appearance in Spanish
Main Article Content
Abstract
The goal of the present teaching activity is to introduce five tasks to improve Spanish learners’ intercultural competence in a foreign language classroom. Intercultural competence involves not only the appropriate use of linguistic features but also of sociocultural ones. It aims to raise awareness, discuss topic appropriateness, and develop curiosity for Spanish-speaking cultures and interaction skills, specifically how to appropriately pay compliments and talk about someone’s physical appearance, useful to successfully communicate in such cultural contexts. The five tasks introduced, piloted in a Spanish classroom, allow the student to raise pragmatic awareness about physical appearance and compliments in the Spanish-speaking world. The task choice followed Byram’s (1997, 2021) Intercultural Communicative Competence model, which comprises raising intercultural competence, interpreting and relating cultural beliefs, interpreting and relating cultural practices, discovering and interacting with cultural practice, and discussing and evaluating cultural practices. Students are also given the opportunity to reflect on the input provided. All the activities were organized keeping in mind the learner’s background and the target culture.
Downloads
Article Details
The Indiana University Linguistics Club Working Papers (the "Publisher") and Author(s) agree as follows.
1. Publication and Promotion: In consideration of the Publisher's agreement to publish the Work, Author hereby grants and assigns to Publisher the non-exclusive right to print, publish, reproduce, or distribute the Work throughout the world in all means of expression by any method known or hereafter developed, including electronic format. Author further grants Publisher the right to use Author's name in association with the Work in published form and in advertising and promotional materials.
2. Copyright: Copyright of the Work remains in the Author's name.
3. Prior Publication and Attribution: Author agrees not to publish the Work in print form prior to publication of the Work by the Publisher. Author agrees to notify IULCWP before publishing the Work elsewhere.
4. Author Representations: The Author represents and warrants that the Work: (a) is the Author's original Work and that the Author has full power to enter into this Agreement; (b) does not infringe the copyright or property of another; (c) contains no material that is obscene, libelous, or defamatory. Author shall indemnify and hold Publisher harmless against loss of expenses arising from breach of any such warranties.
5. Licensing and Reuse: Reuse of the published Work will be governed by a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License (CC BY https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ ). This lets others remix, tweak, and build upon the Work non-commercially; although new works must acknowledge the original IULCWP publication and be non-commercial, they do not have to be licensed on the same terms.