Sep 15, 2009

IN MY TELENOVELA CLASS: MARISA ROMAN VISITS US

Last Friday, my students were somewhat nervous while they were getting ready to have a videoconference with Venezuelan actor Marisa Román. They were concerned about their level of Spanish, and whether it would allow them to participate fully in the conversation. Meanwhile, in my office, Marisa Román waited for my signal to come to my classroom and surprise the students. And it happened. We managed to repeat the wonderful experience of two years ago, when Marisa also came to my class as a surprise.

The conversation was fluent and very honest. There were many lessons. Besides deepening their learning about telenovelas, my students were able to appreciate first hand how, beyond the glittering aspects of celebrity, actors are human beings whose craft is centered on feelings and emotions. In addition, my students, who are frequently inhibited from speaking Spanish because they haven't perfected it, watched how Marisa Román privileged her desire to communicate with them over her English level and had no qualms to correct her spoken English as she answered our questions. (You can read some my students' posts about this visit in the class blog: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9).

Here's a video of the visit. The quality is far from perfect, but the content is representative of what happened in our class during that hour. I hope you will enjoy it as much as we did.


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