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Classroom Rules in Spanish
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6 thoughts on “Classroom Rules in Spanish”
Very helpful. Thank you.
For my concrete students I’d have to add:
10. Recuerda que “Todo es posibile en la clase de español!”
Nathaniel, is there a reason you put the rules in Usted? I would opt to put the rules in the tú form, because I would be using them with the students in that form on a regular basis. I may be wrong to think this but…
That is an excellent question, Paul. I will try to address it with the care it deserves.
1. From a socio-cultural point of view, the students need to learn the least offensive form, i.e., the “usted” or teacher form.
When I was at Middlebury for a summer our Mexican professors expressed their horror over our over-friendliness as evidenced by our use of the “tú” form with them. (We are in the undergrad program. Presumably the grad students were more socially adroit.) And so we did some work to correct our tactlessness.
A few years later, a Mexican lady explained to me that Mexican parents are very concerned that their children not use the family (tú) forms with their teachers. In English, this is a little easier. There is a vocabulary set we need: Yes, sir. No, Ma’am. Mrs. Mr. Etc. In Spanish, as you know, it is more complicated. In addition to the above words, distinctions between family and teacher forms are made with pronouns and verbs. To prepare their children for school, parents begin speaking to them in the teacher forms. By the time the child enters school she already knows how to appropriately address the teacher. (There may be some social correction of forms, but my understanding was that the key to linguistic change the CI the parents gave the children, by addressing them in the teacher form.) My students who hear (and use) Spanish in the home, usually do not know the teacher forms. After all, everyone with whom they interact in Spanish is either friend or family.
Perhaps, my age has something to do with it, but I find myself more bothered by students addressing me in the “tú” or friend form. Students need to appreciate this cultural distinction and observe it. (I think it is more important culturally than a lot of what are offered up to as culture projects.)
The consequence of this train of events is that I decided to start focusing more on the teacher forms and less on the friend forms.
2. From a pedagogical point of view, we try to keep the focus on grammatical forms to a minimum. One consideration is how to take the smallest step as we branch from one form to another. The question can thus be stated, Given where we are with regard to form, where can we minimally expand?
2a. If we use the family command form (escucha) we can extend to the present narration form (also, “escucha”) rather easily because they coincide so well. So the transition is from “Listen, friend!” (escucha) to “he’s listening” (escucha).
2b. If we choose, instead, the talk-to-your-teacher command form (escuche), we can extend to the present comment-on-narration form (also, “escuche”) which is marked by conjunction “que.” So the transition is from “Listen, teacher!” (“escuche”) to “may he listen” (“que escuche”). The use of the form is only limited by the known vocabulary: “It is good for him to listen” (Es bueno que escuche), It is bad for him to listen, she wants him to listen, etc.
With each starting pointing we can easily transition into another use and get some extra mileage. Would the friend form be better than the teacher form? Or vice versa? Would one be more appropriate for a given level? I am not sure.
Hopefully, this explains my use* of the teacher forms, without dictating what you should do, and not even claiming that it is the way it should be done.
One question, though: If you are using the friend form, what do you say when speaking to everybody?
*Almost anyway: In #9, I used the friend / family form for “follow” (sigue) instead of the talk to your teacher form (siga).
Where are rules in other languages?
Haven’t seen classroom rules except in English before. Are you asking who can write them? I could create a Chinese version of those if it’s wanted (and I’d check it with lang-8 to be sure it made sense). The PLC interface can’t display Chinese characters, so it’d be in a document. I use a different (shorter) set of rules myself, only in English so far.
Yes I want the rules in different languages but people probably tweak them so maybe we don’t need them after all. But Nathaniel’s idea needs to be put into classrooms in whatever form. It is in keeping with our increasing awareness of the need to use the TL in our classrooms at all times.