By Lili Lomas

Staff Writer

Pre-Advanced Placement (AP) Spanish III students at Coppell High School are participating in a six week long project called “Querida Carolina” to help them learn the content in their unit of social relationships.

Beginning the project at the start of the third six weeks, students have been receiving three fictional letters per week written by students in the on-level Spanish classes. The letters are written from the perspective of a person with a health problem, as they ask for advice.

Pre-AP students must use the Spanish commands and subjunctives that they have been learning to give advice on what the fictitious people should do to feel better.

“It’s a really positive experience because it lets the students take the place of advice columnists,” Spanish teacher Darryl Lee said. “[It helps them with] understanding between giving a command and giving a recommendation.”

Writing the responses with a partner, students are expected to incorporate what they learn in class and apply it in a letter. This has proven challenging for the students, but a great way to become more familiar with the content.

“I think that they are a good challenge for everyone as writing the language can be very different from speaking it,” CHS sophomore and native Spanish speaker Cristina Gonzalez said.

Not only have the students been expected to write their responses every week, but they are also ending the unit with oral presentations in which they must verbally, in front of the class, tell a “sick” person how to get well.

They are shown an image of an ill person, such as someone holding their head in their hands indicating a headache, and use Spanish to suggest to the person what to do to feel better.

As students do these oral presentations in front of their peers without much insight as to what they may be asked to say, it is a very nerve-racking time for them.

“[The hardest part is] not knowing what the picture is and having to make it up on the spot,” CHS sophomore Alice Duong said.

Although it is difficult for the students to quickly think of a Spanish response using the required commands and subjunctive all while in front of their peers, they also see it as a successful way to learn the language better.

“I understand subjunctive and commands a lot better because of it,” Duong said. “It helped me read faster and be able to generate ideas [in Spanish] more.”

Overall, practicing Spanish in this way has been beneficial to students as they are able to read, write and speak more of the language in situations similar to real life.