Wednesday, April 14th

Today I handed back the exams with the compositions graded. Most did well, but 3 students put little effort into it, which dropped their grades into the failing range. I did not have a chance to speak to them (Vinh, Luke and Evans) individually, but would allow them to write another composition. Since this was their first composition, I spent the first half of class going over some of the common errors I saw (a good way to review what we have covered up to now). We also talked more generally about using the Spanish grammatical structures that we have already learned well when writing rather than thinking in English and translating into Spanish. Students suggested that we give them a composition outside of class when they can have more time to work on it. I agree, so we should coordinate our classes to assign, collect and grade a take home composition sometime before the end of the semester.

This review of the writing led us to talking again about indirect and direct object pronouns, their forms, their use and their order. I would encourage more review (or perhaps smaller groups and practice) with pronouns (including the pronouns of prepositions) especially before we introduce yet another set of pronouns with reflexive verbs.

In the second part of class, I taught "gustar" and other "flip" verbs. I made a handout that further explained the "gustar" construction and introduced other verbs that behave like "gustar" (encantar, hacer falta, faltar, caer bien/mal etc.). The handout had some exercises and the prompt for a writing exercise. It was a lot of new material, but I wanted to at least introduce these other forms since the book really doesn't go into it.

The students still need more time with the material from L7 to digest it, practice and clarify before the quiz. Everything except for the time expressions with "hace" has been taught, but I think more practice and individual or group work is needed to reinforce the multitude of concepts introduced in this lesson. Have a good class Friday!