7th and 8th Grade Spanish: An Update!

Students in 7th and 8th grade Spanish have been hard at work! A critical skill each grade has been working on is something called “circumlocution.” In a language learning context, circumlocution can be used to describe a word by talking around it. One of my favorite examples of this was when a student asked (in Spanish), how to say “night bird.” For someone who doesn’t teach a language, this might sound like an absurd question, however, after adding the word “black,” it was apparent that the student was trying to say the word “bat.” Generally, students are in the habit of drawing or gesturing to express words they don’t know, however, circumlocution is a strategy that extends beyond the classroom and builds their vocabulary so that if they are in a situation where they have to speak Spanish, but don’t know a word, they can still communicate.