The Spanish Wishing Tree

Once students move on from level B1 to B2, the task of working with them on the present subjunctive, the imperative (both positive and negative) and the different pragmatic options that are available to the speaker begins to occur. This grammatical content usually includes suggestions, wishes and advice. To convert all of these notions into language abilities we need an activity that can be fun and engaging for the student.

Thanks to my colleague Sandra, the activity that I will present to you was inspired by her. I must say, in honor of Sandra, that not only does she have an amazing command of Spanish language theory and is an excellent teaching resource, she is also a person with that rare talent of being discreet. She is one of those teachers that keeps a low profile in the classroom yet understands how to direct a class and move them in the direction that she would like them to go—always in way that maximizes the learning opportunities of the group. Finally, I must commend her fantastic creativity—she is always thinking up new activities and exercises that break the monotony of the classroom routine and helps make learning easier for her students.

Thanks to Sandra, I'll present this fun and engaging activity. For this exercise we will place in the classroom a vase with decorative dried branches and if you find them in different colors, better. At this point we won't mention anything about the activity and the students will think we have only been up to a little interior decorating.

Expressing Wishes and Desires in Spanish

When we begin to talk about expressing wishes and desires, we'll normally explain the structure using the verbs Querer, Desear or Esperar. The next step is to add an infinitive to one of these verbs (e.g. Quiero perder peso). Once we've explained this, we'll give our students a couple of sticky notes where they will write their wish(es)—but without them signing it! They will then hang their notes on the wishing tree with a paper clip. When they are finished hanging their wishes, we'll continue with another activity. After letting some time pass, we'll go back to the tree and ask each student to take a wish but being sure to not pick their own. Now they must think of a bit of advice or offer a suggestion to the person that wrote on the sticky note they have chosen. They should use the structures that we have previously reviewed in class like: Yo que tú/Yo, en tú lugar/Yo…+ imperfect. They can also use the structure ¿Por qué no + present indicative? (¿Por qué no comes menos?). If you feel up to it, one more step in this process would be asking the students to imagine who wrote the wish to which they have responded.

The tree will carry the wishes and desires as well as the advice for a week, more or less. During this time we can review other structures and expressions of wishes and desires that require the use of the present subjunctive—used when wishes are expressed for someone other than the speaker: Espero que mi jefe sea más amable conmigo. (I hope my boss is nice to me.) Once we've reviewed these new structures, we can go back to our tree and ask our students to express themselves in writing, also with sticky notes like the last time. But these wishes should be ones that are not related to them directly, instead they can write about the world, society, family, friends, Spanish classes, another person and the list goes on and on.

We should hope to see sentences like: Deseo que las guerras terminen este año (I want the wars to end this year).  These new desires should be hung on the wishing tree's colorful branches and later, just like the exercise before either individually or as a group (whichever you prefer); we'll offer solutions using the conditional as an added element to ones that had been created earlier.

Anything we can do to decorate the classroom is always a positive thing and the wishing tree will allow our students to observe different harvests of wishes, their own progression using these constructions and their overall evolution in learning Spanish.

With this exercise, conscious learning (which isn't the same as descriptive) becomes another element for us to use in our Spanish language classes that will help us increase our students' motivation and willingness to risk using new grammatical structures. After all, students shouldn't be afraid to make mistakes since it is learning from those mistakes that will make them better Spanish speakers.