Spanish Listening and Speaking Activities

Are you doing Integrated Spanish Listening and Speaking Activities in your Spanish classes this year? Embarrassing fact: I was NOT doing a lot of that with my students in the recent past. But now that my school offers the Seal of Biliteracy, my students need practice with the ILS, or Integrated Speaking and Listening activity. So as all teachers do, I learned and adapted. Hopefully I can help you learn to create these activities too!

What Is a Spanish Listening and Speaking Activity?

ILS activities do just what they say! They integrate listening and speaking to simulate a conversation. On the AAPPL Test, for example, students watch a video of a person who tells them or asks them something. Then students have to respond to what they heard.

Here is an example of what a student may hear: ¡Hola! Ayer tuve que ir al supermercado porque mi mamá quería preparar una cena especial para el cumpleaños de mi papá. ¿Qué come tu familia cuando hay una celebración? Dame muchos detalles.

Now the student will reply. Theoretically, in order to score well, students must demonstrate that they understood what they heard and use the right time frame in their response. On the AAPPL Test, the questions start with prompts geared towards lower proficiency levels and become more complex as they go.

How Can You Create These Listening and Speaking Activities?

It’s really not too hard to create your own Spanish Listening and Speaking activities! Here’s how!

First decide what you want your students to practice. Your options are something targeted, like prompts based on the theme or unit you’re on right now, or a time frame you’re working on right now, or something more like Seal of Biliteracy tests that span any and all topics and time frames. As you get started with these kinds of activities, I recommend starting with something very familiar to your students. We want to build confidence and help them feel successful.

Next write the script for what your students will hear. You can decide how many prompts they will hear. For a good Spanish Listening and Speaking practice, I recommend 5-10 prompts. What they hear should not be long- between 10 and 30 seconds is good!

**Here is what mine look like to give you an idea.**

Then you will record your prompts. How you do this will depend on what resources you have at your school. If you are lucky enough to have a language lab, use that software. My school uses a (paid for) site called Extempore which allows us a lot of the same features as a language lab. If you don’t have anything like that, use any free online voice recorder site!

Again, depending on your resources, you will either set up your software program to allow students to respond orally, or you will create a google doc where you can link in your audio recording prompts. If you are using a google doc, you will instruct your students to open their own tab to record themselves, and after they listen to your prompt, they will record and respond, and paste their audio link into the google doc. It will look like this!

Tips for Spanish Listening and Speaking Activities

It’s really not too hard to create these! The trick is to do them frequently so that your students become accustomed to these integrated listening and speaking activities.

Another tip is to be sure to add in the phrases that they will hear on tests like the AAPPL Test and others for the Seal of Biliteracy. “Dame muchos detalles. Cuéntame. Hazme preguntas.” Are all phrases they will hear frequently!

Though these activities are not difficult to make, sometimes we are short on time or on ideas. If you want some ready to use practice Spanish Listening and Speaking Activities, check out the resources listed below! And for another way to get students using language creatively every day, check out my post called Spanish Speaking Proficiency: Class Activities.