De pelicula! Spanish Conversation through Film

Table of Contents

Description

Based on the pioneering text Cinema for Spanish Conversation, ¡De Película! uses recent feature films with a PG or PG-13 rating to build Spanish language skills in listening, speaking, and reading. The text also provides a unique method to explore the cultural concepts depicted in the films.

As with the parent text, ¡De Película! provides a context for listening to the film through previewing exercises, background information, vocabulary, cultural material, and post-viewing exercises, including student exercises to be done in small groups. This version covers eight films and may be used as a primary or ancillary text in fourth year high school courses, for community college courses -- especially those language courses taught in the evening -- or in single-semester courses at most colleges.

All films are new to this edition and come from a range of Spanish-speaking countries, All may be easily obtained for classroom viewing or language labs, or for students to purchase or rent on their own.

Features of the book (for each chapter):

Preliminary vocabulary

4 Segmented film study sections:

     -Preparación , Los personajes , Exploración , Notas culturales

Conversation exercises for the whole class, small groups, or pairs

Short composition exercises

Market

Designed for high school level courses in Spanish language which draw on feature films for conversation topics, culture, and language building skills by the authors of the primary text, Cinema for Spanish Conversation.

About the Author

Mary McVey Gill has co-authored many widely adopted textbooks in Spanish, including "En contacto: Gramatica en accion" (8th edition), "En contacto: Lecturas intermedias (8th edition), "Hablemos español" (6th edition), and "Tune Up Your Spanish".  She has also co-authored "Streetwise Spanish" and "Streetwise Spanish Dictionary/Thesaurus".

Deana Smalley (Ph.D. in Hispanic literature, Purdue University) has taught at a variety of colleges and universities, including the University of Wisconsin-Madison, Stanford University and Santa Clara University. She began to incorporate film into her language, culture and literature classes early in her teaching career. She is the author of web activities, video activities and test banks for major Spanish textbook companies.

Choice of Films

Choosing the films was extremely difficult, since there are such a tremendous variety of wonderful movies in Spanish. The movies were chosen for quality, cultural and historical content, and appeal to students; however, the choice also depended heavily on availability. Many excellent films are simply too hard to get in the United States or Canada. (Some countries have very highly developed cinematic industries with a long history of production and excellent distributing and marketing so that the films reach a global audience, but not all do.) Difficulty was another factor: some movies are too complicated to be used successfully or the pronunciation is hard to understand. Another important criterion was that we chose films that were not R-rated. See the chart following the preface for ratings and other information about each film. (Note that there is some violence and swearing in Machuca, especially at the end.)

Films covered:

La misma luna | Danzón | Todos somos estrellas | De eso no se habla | Un lugar en el mundo | Manchuca

Guantanamera  | Nueba Yol  | El viaje de Carol

Click here for more information, including sample pages, for this title. (pdfs of sample pages)