The Spanish Encounters Project

The Spanish Encounters Project is a way of inspiring you to apply the skills you’ve learned in class to a real world context. In a city like New York, there are so many opportunities to speak and listen to Spanish all around you. The Encounters Journal is designed to encourage you to interact in Spanish outside of the classroom and record your experience so others can learn from it. I ask that you have no less than one Spanish Encounter a month and record what you did on our class blog.


Here are some examples of Spanish Encounters of students from previous years:

-Interview a Spanish-speaking family member, neighbor, worker, or friend
-Chat with a Spanish-speaking classmate, faculty or staff member at school
-View a television show, sports event or news program entirely in Spanish
-Listen to an album by a Latin American or Spanish artist who sings with Spanish lyrics
-Attend a Latin dance class
-Visit an art exhibit that features Latin American or Spanish art or has descriptions in both Spanish and English
-Record of all the signs you see in Spanish for an entire day
-When eating in a Spanish or Latin American restaurant, greet the wait staff in Spanish and order your food in Spanish
-Surf the Internet and shop in Spanish
-Become pen pals with a native Spanish speaker, or chat online

-Cook a dish from a recipe written entirely Spanish
-Read a short novel or book of poems in Spanish
-Peruse Spanish magazines or newspapers





Each Spanish Encounters entry should include the following:
-The who, what, where and when of the experience
-New Spanish vocabulary and phrases that emerged from the experience
-Your feelings and insights about the experience
-What you learned culturally, linguistically or otherwise
-A photograph or some visual image



The Spanish Encounters should be written in Spanish and will be considered when I calculate your participation and homework grade. You should have a total of two encounters posted on the blog for each quarter. Please don’t neglect to complete the assignment, it can make or break your Spanish grade.