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Interviews
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Interviews are a great way for students to practice their listening comprehension skills.  They must listen to the speaker and demonstrate their understanding by taking notes, summarizing the interview, and by asking follow up questions.  Student can interview classmates, a guest speaker, a Spanish-speaker outside of the classroom, or listen to a recording of an interview. 

Interview Activities

    Celebrities
    1. Students listen to an interview with a celebrity. 
    2. Afterwards, they write follow up questions based on the celebrity’s responses. 
    Cloze Activity
    1. Give students a transcript of an interview based on a topic students are learning.
    2. For beginners it can be something simple such as “Hello.  How are you?  What is your name?”  For advanced students, it can be more in depth such as a job interview.
    3. Leave key expressions blank.
    4. Students fill in the blanks as they listen.
    Collage
    1. Students interview a partner in Spanish.
    2. Afterwards, they create a collage containing things that represent what they learned about their partner. 
    3. Students then present the collage to the class in Spanish.
    4. Students take notes on each presentation including three things they learned about each classmate.
    5. Provide more detail – information students should include along with a worksheet for students to take notes on.
    Discussion
    1. Interview someone who speaks Spanish and record it.  
    2. Ask students questions about what the speakers said.
    3. Conduct a class discussion on the dialogue, accent, vocabulary used, and topic.
    Guest Speaker Interview
    1. Invite a guest speaker who speaks Spanish or who has been to a Spanish-speaking country.
    2. Students interview the guest speaker and take notes.
    3. Afterwards, they summarize the interview in Spanish. 


Resources

Democracy Now - US news site in Spanish with national and world news, audio clips with news summaries and interviews, and transcripts.

SDSU's Language Acquisition Resource Center - This website contains video interviews in Spanish.  I found many interviews in the Latin American Women section. Not all videos had transcripts and lessons since it appears to be a work in progress.  There are videos on a large variety of topics such as Arabic women, Baja literature authors, business, literature, culture, education, festivals, grammar, human rights, Latin American women, music, OPI practice, poetry, spirituality, and travel. 

Google Videos - You can find a lot of interviews here.  Just type in entrevistas and there will be many results in Spanish.

YouTube - You can find many interviews in Spanish on YouTube if you type in entrevista.  You can even download videos and save them to a flash drive, a CD, on an iPod/MP3 player, or save them to your computer.

Radio Formula - This Mexican radio station has online listening recorded programs including interviews.

Stanford Spanish Language Program - You will find interviews with artists, scientists, economists, etc. and other audio files.

Radio Nizkor - There are various interviews on this news website.

Radio Internacional Feminista - Fire - This website has many interviews with women on various topics such as health, women's rights, violence against women, war, technology, education, and politics.

Also check out the resources from the following links since because you will find interviews, especially from news and radio stations:

Newscasts

Native Speakers

Video Clips

Radio

Downloading Videos

If you would like to download videos from YouTube or another video website (since your school may block YouTube) try these websites:

Vixy.net - I normally use Vixy because you can easily download videos in a variety of formats by cutting and pasting the video url.  In addition, they have a desktop Converter that you can download so you don't have to log onto their website each time you want to download the video.  The site normally works but a couple of times I have visited and it was down.  In any case, this is a great place to start!

YouTube Catcher - Here you can easily download YouTube Videos by copying and pasting the video url.

Downloading YouTube Videos - This is a must-read article from FLTEACH on how to download YouTube videos.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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