🎭🎨bellas artes, música, danza, teatro 

It all started with me showing "Buscando a Nemo" and then later "Los Increibles" to my high school students with accompanying task based activities that scaffolded these highly contextualized Pixar animation movies. The class was enthralled in these movies, happily did the tasks and then retold the story in their own words class after class. Not withstanding, I know many of you watch some of your favorite English based shows in Spanish, dubbed, subtitled or both. 

Never before have we had such great access to films in Spanish dubbed so well by professionals at such a minimal cost. Only years ago, there were some cutting edge film based and telenovela based text series but they were highly contrived. Decent but the students' intelligence and our natural ability to acquire. They also did not allow for any speaking or writing activities until later in a unit. They were based on emerging theories of language acquisition. Now, with functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging, we now known that these theories are proven by science. It seems like everybody is offering a course where you learn by watching television or films. One such company is Lingopie.

Why do I recommend these to you? Well, after watching each of these series at least twice, I began to appreciate the production value, quality of the performances and the excellent writing in each of these series. Also, the current recommendations reflect a range of places in the Spanish speaking world. Entrevias is very urban, very Madrid, reflecting many generations, modern problems, yet has a sense of humor and there a lot of values and heart in the writing. Then you have the other three series, some from a very famous author of best selling novels. Two of the series are produced in the autonomous region of Cataluna/Barcelona reflecting an accurate depiction of the Middle Ages in Spain and the beginning of the Inquistion. While the third one is from Colombia, South America. While the third one is from Colombia, South America. It's a period piece series best described by the Netflix summary as you can see above.

There is such a range in these types of shows and telenovelas that I think it is worth you at least experiencing. These  lend themselves to learning a lot about the culture. The actors in each of these series feature some of the most popular in the Spanish speaking world if not in the perspective viewing areas. So, what I am asking you is to get out of your comfort zone of simply watching English-speaking culture and content to watch any series, show, movie, documentary, that really sparks your interest or moves you

There is so much good content out there in Spanish right now, available like never before. Most of it virtually free. We don't know how much longer that me be the case in an ever changing world. All I know is that if I had this much content available when I started out, I would already be learning a 6th or 7th language by now. 

Obviously, if you don't like these series or shows, please share with us what you find motivates you to learn Spanish. What content or cultural products from the cultures do you find helpful? What practices, traditions or customs engage you enough to keep going in your Spanish learning goals? What point of view are the most appealing to you about the Spanish speaking folks that you interact with or want to interact with?

Take advantage of it and tell us your recommendations too! ¿Qué recomiendas tu?