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Anthony J.
Cárdenas
University of New Mexico The purpose of this activity is to provide a creative opportunity through which students may practice narrating past actions. It can be used both for beginning students and for advanced ones, provided appropriate variables are taken into consideration. It can be context-specific or open to any past action a student may wish to share, and it involves speaking, listening, reading, and writing. While this activity, as described, is designed for a beginning-level class, extrapolations for its application to more advanced levels are included. Each student receives on a slip of paper an action which he/she supposedly did at some earlier time, e.g., «Me bañé.» He/she then writes one or two actions that would logically precede and one or two actions that would logically follow the assigned action. As students are completing this task, the teacher is free to monitor for correct forms and to provide any necessary assistance. Thus, when a student receives «Me bañé», he/she provides something such as: (Antes) 1. Me quité la ropa. 2. Me senté en la bañera. («Me bañé.») (Después) 3. Me sequé. 4. Me vestí. The students should then be divided into two groups and their desks into two rows facing each other. Group 1 is stationary. Group 2 is mobile. Each student (S1), now facing another (S2), reads the two actions done before and the two done after the mystery action. On the basis of this information S2 guesses what S1 did, writing down S1's name and what S2 thinks that S1 did. A 3rd-person singular form will now be practiced in written form. The procedure is then reversed with S2 reading and S1 guessing. The students do not tell each other what the mystery action is. When this exchange is completed the students of Group 2 rise and move to the left (the left-most rotating to the right-most position) so that each has a new partner. The interchange is repeated until all of Group 1 has exchanged with all of Group 2 and viceversa, or until a certain time limit has been reached. Throughout this activity students are orally practicing the 1st-person singular preterite form of the verb. The teacher may then ask individual students to state what they did (i.e., the mystery action), and thus further practice with this form, or, the teacher may ask others «¿Qué hizo Paco?» The students say «se bañó» or whatever action they think that Paco did. The teacher then may ask «¿Cómo se sabe que Paco se bañó?» Students then have the opportunity to repeat what Paco said he had done before taking a bath and what he had done after taking a bath. During this time students will be practicing the 3rd-person singular of the preterite. If practice with the 1st-and 3rd-person plurals is the goal, a student from Group 1 and another from Group 2 can be given the same action. Thus when the teacher asks «¿Qué hizo Paco?», if Rosa did the same, she can say «Paco desayunó» or «Paco y yo desayunamos.» The teacher can then ask «¿Qué hicieron Paco y Rosa?» The correct answer of course would be «Desayunaron.» This activity may be varied in a number of ways. For example, if the
students are not yet familiar with the 3rd-person plural, the teacher may vary
the question and ask «¿Quiénes desayunaron?», there by modeling the
3rd-person plural preterite form of the verb. The answer: «Paco y Rosa
('desayunaron' -optional).» If the
All of Group 1 need not interview all of Group 2. Instead of using facing desks, students may be divided into groups of any size the teacher chooses and each member of the group can relate the be fore and after clues for his/her mystery action to the other members of the group. The amount of time spent on this activity is determined by the teacher. This activity allows students to: 1.) create with the language 2.) practice verb forms repeatedly 3.) hear certain verb forms repeatedly 4.) have their curiosity piqued by the mystery action. The mystery action activity easily lends itself to any chapter theme. Thus «pasar la aspiradora», «lavar los platos», «sacudir los muebles», «tender las camas», etc., can be used if the chapter theme is household chores. In this activity students often use vocabulary not familiar to their peers. This is an excellent source for new vocabulary. Should S1 or S2 hear unfamiliar vocabulary, he/she should be encouraged to ex plain to the partner his/her lack of understanding of the term as would be done in a real-life conversation. The user should explain the term in the target language. The biggest advantages are that students thoroughly enjoy this activity, are permitted to create with the language, and are exposed to a considerable amount of interesting narration in a short period of time. 
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