Spanish Writing Activities

• Spanish writing activities can help teach the language.writing image by Alison Bowden from Fotolia.com
  
  Learning a foreign language adds a valuable and useful skill. To demonstrate to students how being bilingual can benefit them in the real world, it is an excellent idea to provide opportunities to practice reading, writing and speaking. For Spanish teachers interested in exposing their students to different writing activities, there are several ways to do it. Allowing them to work with Spanish-speaking students, create original written works and share stories are just a few.
  
  

Pen Pals

• Students are often introduced to the concept of a pen pal in late elementary or early middle school. A wonderful way to incorporate this activity into Spanish class is to have students partner up with school districts around the country or even across the globe. Students can be assigned a pen pal that is currently taking the same level of Spanish instruction, or be paired with a Spanish-speaking student who is living in a Spanish-speaking country. Both choices will allow students to practice basic greetings in Spanish and perhaps be exposed to new vocabulary and terminology that they have not had a chance to use. Instructors can require students to write friendly and informal letters in the proper format, using Spanish words. This will allow students a chance to further understand communicating in a foreign language.
  
  

Role Play

• Another interesting way for students to practice their Spanish writing skills is to compose, with a partner, a one-page skit that is written in entirely in Spanish. This is an ideal activity to review vocabulary. For example, if a foreign language class recently studied Spanish terminology for rooms and items in the household, the partners could write a one-page skit that discusses how to divide household chores. After the skits are written they could be acted out in front of the class to show total understanding.
  
  

Children's Stories

• Foreign language students can also practice the written language by creating children's books. Most children's books use basic sentence structure to tell their stories to young readers. This can be an appropriate model for how the instructor expects the students to write their stories, depending upon how advanced the class is. Each student can choose a topic such as "fiestas" or "colores" and base their stories around several vivid sentences that show their understanding of how to write correctly in Spanish.