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Home > Pre-AP > Pre-AP FAQs > Student Unit: Pre-AP Strategies for Spanish Literature
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Student Unit: Pre-AP Strategies for Spanish Literature
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by Bonnie Bowen
Faculty Consultant
Adjunct Professor of Spanish
Ventura College
Ventura, California
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and Jim Cardella
California State University
Fresno, California
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Levels: Spanish I or II heritage-speaker; Spanish III standard; or AP Spanish Language
Teachers: Bonnie T. Bowen and James M. Cardella
Theme/Topic: Proverbs (comparing and contrasting how different cultures view their worlds through proverbs)
Addressed Standards: Communication, cultures, connections, and comparisons
Suggested Time: Partial class periods over a span of two to three weeks
Goal: Students will create a narrative based on a proverb. Students will point out by means of footnotes specific examples of rhyme and poetic devices.
This lesson is intended to familiarize students with the importance of proverbs in speaking and understanding Spanish and to introduce them to rhyme in Hispanic poetry and to the common poetic devices of alliteration, metaphor, and metonymy. It offers practice for developing student proficiency in identifying these three devices. Further goals include training students to determine plausible (defensible) effects on poetic expression of the presence or absence of rhyme in verse and of the presence or absence of alliteration, metaphor, and metonymy. Not of least importance, even as students take their first steps toward building skills in literary analysis, is the permanent goal for all Spanish-language classrooms of increasing student expressivity in Spanish by provoking discussions that are of high interest, beginning with students' own experience. Finally, the Pre-AP Literature student will benefit from increased familiarity with Spanish proverbs, whose role in works on the AP Spanish Literature curriculum such as El Quijote and Lazarillo is notable.
Objective I: In short discussions of five to ten minutes per day, students will contribute proverbs or bits of cultural (practical) wisdom familiar to them, sayings they may have heard and learned in their lives and discussed with their families, creating a unique class list over a one- to two-week period.
Objective II: Students will identify elements of rhyme (consonance, assonance, and blank verse) in a given proverb.
Objective III: Students will identify poetic devices (specifically alliteration, metaphor, and metonymy) present in a given proverb.
Objective IV: Students will present information based on specific proverbs.
Step One: The teacher opens the class discussion by pointing out the presence of proverbs or sayings in our lives, whether in Spanish, in English, or in other languages. Offer and elicit comment on common examples. Consult the attached list for ideas. Some questions to pose are the following: "What does your family commonly say to you if you remark on a huge coincidence in your life or if you bring up how impatient (sorry, scared, insecure, offended, or hungry) you may be feeling under certain circumstances?" "Has anyone ever said to you when someone you've just been talking about shows up unexpectedly, 'Hablando del rey de Roma, en seguida se asoma'?" "When grabbing too many toys (or too much candy, or too many seashells on the beach), has anyone ever said to you, 'La codicia rompe el saco'?"
Daily discussions over the introductory one- to two-week period of assembling the class's proverb list may include further teacher questions like the following: "My grandmother used to say to me, 'Haz el bien, y no mires a quién'. What do you think she meant by that?" "If something really pretty in a store caught your eye, and right then and there you wanted it no matter what it cost, might your grandfather say to you, 'No es oro todo lo que brilla'?" "What might he intend you to see by saying that?" "If your best friend from elementary school started hanging around with bad friends and your mother said to you, 'Dime con quién andas y te diré quién eres,' what might she be warning about?" "If a political scandal involving big payoffs to a formerly respected politician led your uncle to remark, 'Poderoso caballero es don Dinero,' what might he mean by that?"
Step Two: Students are asked to contribute sayings they know, whether in Spanish or another language. Discuss in Spanish their meanings-discussing circumstances that would be appropriate to their use-, and compare these with others' contributions, five to ten minutes per day over a one- to two-week period.
Step Three: Discussion is focused on clarifying what our families mean by the sayings they use, and discussion questions may include "Can two sayings contradict each another?" ("Absence makes the heart grow fonder." vs. "Out of sight, out of mind.") and "Have you ever discovered that a saying commonly used in your family has a slightly different form in a friend's family?" ("Tanto va el cántaro al agua que al fin se rompe." vs. "Tanto va el cántaro a la fuente que al fin se quiebra.")
The class list grows on a daily basis and will include only Spanish sayings, some of which may reflect English proverbs that may be discussed but not added unless a corresponding or similar Spanish saying can be discovered, e.g., "The coast is clear," and "No hay moros en la costa."
The teacher accepts all variations in Spanish sayings.
The class list may take different forms, such as:
1) a simple hand-written list posted on a wall;
2) a growing collage; or
3) a mobile, or series of mobiles, hung from the classroom ceiling and added to daily.
Step Four: The teacher gradually introduces into the discussion the presence of rhyme in many of the contributed proverbs.
Some points the teacher will want to make clear over time:
1) Consonance1 is determined by the presence of the same consonant sounds AND the same vowel sounds at the end of a series of lines of poetry "a partir de la vocal de la última sílaba tónica; es decir, a partir de la vocal de la última sílaba que carga la fuerza de la voz." Consonance may be found in only one syllable if, and only if, the lines involved in the rhyme are "versos agudos," or in two syllables if the lines involved are "versos llanos o graves," or in three syllables if the lines involved are "versos esdrújulos." This last possibility is so rare as to be of negligible importance for teaching.
2) Assonance5 is determined by the presence of the same vowel sounds at the end of a series of lines of poetry "a partir de la vocal de la última sílaba tónica; es decir, a partir de la vocal de la última sílaba que carga la fuerza de la voz." Unlike consonance, in assonance the consonant sounds are different. Assonance may be found in only one syllable if, and only if, the lines involved in the rhyme are "versos agudos," or in two syllables, if the lines involved are "versos llanos o graves," or in three syllables, if the lines involved are "versos esdrújulos." This last possibility is so rare as to be of negligible is importance for teaching.
3) If, when examining a word "a partir de la vocal de la última sílaba tónica," a diphthong is found to occur in a potentially rhyming syllable, only the strong vowel (the "a," the "e," or the "o") of the diphthong is taken into account for the purposes of rhyme; the weak vowel (the "i" or the "u") of the diphthong is discounted, and it plays no role in the rhyme. This is as true of assonance as it is of consonance.
4) When no consonance or assonance is present in a series of lines, the term "verso blanco" may be applied. Note that "verso blanco" (in English, "blank verse") and "verso libre" (in English, "free verse") are not the same thing. "Verso libre" denotes the presence of an irregular number of poetic syllables in lines of poetry. This unit of study is not designed to take up the question of "verso libre," since the division of the proverbs used will not result in enough lines to make a determination regarding any regularity in the number of syllables.
NOTE: It is doubtful that the following attendant issue regarding assonance and consonance will come up in this lesson, but if it should, this clarification will aid understanding:
5) Neither assonance nor consonance is held to be present unless a pattern is distinguishable; that pattern may be (a) its presence at the end of every line (This will be the case in the sayings under discussion here.); (b) its presence at the end of only the even-numbered lines; or (c) any other distinguishable pattern. If consonance or assonance appears to be present but does not correspond to a distinguishable pattern, it doesn't fulfill the requirements for consonance or assonance.
An example:
In the following Romancillo by Luis de Góngora, it's said that the even-numbered lines have assonance. This is so in spite of the fact that one of the odd-numbered lines ("dejadme llorar") shows the same assonance, and in spite of the fact that some of the rhyming syllables in the even-numbered lines show consonance (lugar/casar/mar):
La más bella niña
de nuestro lugar,
hoy viuda y sola
y ayer por casar,
viendo que sus ojos
a la guerra van
a su madre dice
que escucha su mal:
dejadme llorar
orillas del mar.
Step Five: Students all receive, without comment, a teacher-selected list of the class's Spanish proverbs. Each proverb may or may not be identified by its student contributor's name, as the teacher sees fit. Upon receiving it, most students will read-in fact, re-experience-the list with new interest in their own contributions and in proverbs contributed by others.
Step Six: (Possible activities)
- Students pair up. Each pair of students receives an envelope containing 15-20 slips of paper. Students are instructed to read each slip of paper, each of which contains a single proverb. Students will place each proverb in one of three columns: "Rima consonante" "Rima asonante" and "Verso blanco."
- Each student in the class is given a slip of paper. On each slip is written one proverb. The teacher gives three corners of the room a name ("Rima consonante" "Rima asonante" and "Verso blanco"). The students are instructed to walk to the corner of the classroom that best corresponds to the type of rhyme demonstrated in the proverb.
- Students, in groups of twos or threes, will work together to identify the type of rhyme present in the Spanish sayings on this class list, following directions similar to those on the accompanying sample list. Class discussion will follow to clarify differing perceptions.
Step Seven: At the lesson's end, students will be tested on the elements of rhyme, following the same format as that used for the student-group work, on the whole body of student-contributed proverbs. (At the discretion of the teacher, a further test, beyond Step Fourteen, may cover the meanings of the proverbs on the class list.)
Step Eight: (OPTIONAL) Poetic devices may be noted from day to day in class discussion; among them are alliteration (the repetition of sounds-particularly, but not exclusively, initial sounds-within a text, like the proverbs under discussion), metaphor (the collision of two ideas in a shared category of meaning, such that some aspects or elements of one idea are transferred to the other), and metonymy (where one thing or idea is substituted for another whose close association to the first is socially learned; possible associations include, but are not limited to, origin, content, and possession).
Discussion of these devices should never come to an end without attempting to resolve the question "What effect does the presence of this device have on the proverb and what it means to us?" The teacher elicits student answers with an accepting attitude, all the while urging students to defend their answers with reasons.
Step Nine: (OPTIONAL) After the teacher provides examples of different types of poetic devices discovered in proverbs, the students will do a series of recognition activities.
- Students will work in pairs or in groups of three. The teacher gives different groups five or six different proverbs. Students are instructed to see if there is any alliteration and to determine what the metaphor, if any, represents.
- Students, in groups of two or three, will work together to identify the poetic devices present in the Spanish sayings on the whole class list. Class discussion will follow to clarify and address differing perceptions.
Step Ten: (OPTIONAL) Students will be tested on identifying the poetic devices.
Step Eleven: Students will role-play an interview or a conversation between a novice and an expert.
"Novice" Possibilities
1) Student needing help on the appropriate application of certain proverbs
2) Interviewer from a cultural or literary magazine
3) Young person who just loves poetry, particularly the magic of metaphor
"Expert" Possibilities
1) Teacher with too many papers to correct
2) Author who's written a book on proverbs
3) Poet, famous but arrogant
Situation: The novice and expert use two of the proverbs as a basis for their discussion. The novice asks the expert for more information about the proverbs, perhaps asking the reason for the rhyme, or the reason for the use of the poetic device. The expert analyzes the first proverb. However, the novice has to correct the expert on the second proverb.
The students have time in class to practice. They will present the conversation to their classmates.
Step Twelve: The students act out a proverb. Three to five students are given a proverb or select a proverb to act out. One member of the group is the narrator, or the group can act as a Greek chorus, to set the scene. The group acts out a scene, gives a demonstration, or has a conversation to illustrate one of the proverbs studied. Each group must have an object or symbol that represents the metaphor from the proverb. At the end, the narrator points out any necessary information to help the rest of the class see the point.
Students have time in class to practice, and time to present.
Step Thirteen: Students will write a narrative based on one proverb. Each student or group is given a different proverb. Each student or group will write a narrative based on that proverb. The narrative should be a story that will help others understand that particular proverb. Each narrative should include a footnote or footnotes that will point out the elements of rhyme, and the use of poetic devices, used in the proverb. Each student should attempt to explain what the proverb is trying to emphasize.
Step Fourteen: Students will read each other's stories to see if the meaning is clear.
NOTE: All discussion during Steps One through Fourteen will take place in Spanish.
Bonnie began her career teaching kindergarten at the American School of Quito, Ecuador. In California public secondary schools, she taught Spanish full-time for 30 years. She taught AP first at Bullard High School in Fresno and then at Birmingham High School in the San Fernando Valley. She has taught Spanish at California State University, Fresno, and at community colleges in Southern California. Bonnie has led Saturday workshops and summer institutes for more than a decade and a half, and has been a Reader in AP Spanish since 1993. She currently teaches Spanish at Ventura College, where she directs her own AP Spanish Literature summer institute, the San Buenaventura APSI.
During a 35-year career in Fresno, California, Jim Cardella taught AP courses in both French and Spanish. He not only led his high school students through the required AP coursework, but also produced and directed a yearly play based on an AP author or an AP work. (For many of the students, being in one of these plays was the defining moment of their foreign language classes.) Jim retired in 2002 from the high school level and is currently working part-time at California State University: Fresno as a university supervisor for student teachers and also as the instructor of the methods course for future teachers of French and Spanish.
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