Spanish 201 students in Prof. Martha Davis’s class presented their top reasons to study Spanish at NOVA. Savanna Sulc’s video, which showed her giving her dog Spanish commands among other entertaining and educational features, was voted “Presentación más convincente” by her classmates. As one student wrote, “Esta presentacion es la mas convincente porque usa otras personas, sus vecinos y otras estudiantes y tambien los animales. Presenta nuevas razones por estudiar espanol, por ejemplo, los beneficios para el cerebro.” Caleb Rivera and Riquell Denham received Honorable Mention for their video.

Prof. Davis looks forward to showcasing her students’ work in her session on interactive student video projects at the 2018 American Association of Teachers of Spanish and Portuguese (AATSP) Conference in Salamanca, Spain this June.

Learning idioms is a great way to build vocabulary, use a variety of grammar tenses and the subjunctive mood in short phrases, and expand your knowledge of the target culture while comparing it to your own.

Do you know these?

1. El hambre es la mejor salsa.
2. Nunca digas de esa agua no beberé (ni este cura no es mi padre).
3. Del dicho al hecho hay un gran trecho.
4. Dime con quién andas y te diré quién eres.

Interested to know their origin and meaning? The Centro Virtual Cervantes has information about the usage, origin and equivalents in other languages of these idioms and many more: https://cvc.cervantes.es/lengua/refranero/listado.aspx

(Pictured above: List of Spanish idioms compiled by a SPA 206 student with help from his Bolivian mother. A class favorite was “Al que le quede el guante que se lo chante.” We had to look up “chantar” in www.rae.es., which is typically used in Bolivia and other South American countries.)

The DC premiere of En el tiempo de las mariposas (In the Time of the Butterflies) is coming soon. The play, which is based on the novel by Julia Álvarez, will be performed from April 12-May 13 at Teatro GALA in Columbia Heights. Like the book, the play is a fictional account of the real-life story of the Mirabal sisters who – until their brutal murders – fought General Rafael Trujillo’s regime in the Dominican Republic using the code name “butterflies.”

Tickets, which are regularly priced at $45, are available to students, anyone under 30 years of age, members of the military and senior citizens for $30. English speakers are recommended to sit in rows E through H in order to read the surtitles comfortably.

For more information and to purchase tickets, visit http://en.galatheatre.org