Abstract:

After analyzing the different textbooks used to teach Spanish as a foreign language, it has been seen that most of them adopt a task-based approach, so they are quite innovative. However, once is analyzed the content and its presentation, these final tasks are too shallow and, therefore, the exponential and experiential knowledge of the students is very limited.

Therefore, once the deficiencies have been analyzed, a method has been applied and perfected in Spanish classes at the university. The main objective was to start from this proposal of a task approach to make a total and much more complete activity that really closes the topic.

As an example, you can choose the topic of travel, which is present in all textbooks of different levels, but it can be applied to all the topics. Normally, the final activity of the books is to invent a trip in which one talks about a hotel and some monuments of any city.

On the other hand, our proposal allows us to go much further and demand much more from students. The objective is to receive a much higher level of detail and demand. Through different requirements that are asked to students (in addition to working in groups, not individually), students can learn more deeply and perfect different lexical expressions that, on the other hand, would not be worked on.

The trip that these students must create must be 100% real (not invented), using different devices and the internet, they must simulate the same exercise that they would do at home if they wanted to go on vacation to Spain. In addition, all the details related to leisure, meals, transportation, etc. must be offered on this vacation. This search allows the student, actively, to reflect on the lexicon that is really necessary when they want to travel and also to see that lexicon that, actually, although it is studied, is either obsolete or simply not used.

On the other hand, the fact of choosing a specific city in Spain and working it in depth has shown that motivation and connection with the Spanish language and its culture grows and allows the students to see, on the one hand, a great usefulness of the classes Spanish and, on the other hand, to be involved with their classes.

The last relevant aspect that is worked on in this way is culture. In the classes, normally, there is not much room for this aspect, which, in reality, is essential for a real knowledge of the Spanish language. From the data that will be expected from the students, interesting topics will appear for the class such as the schedules of Spain, the Spanish gastronomy, interesting monuments of the city or, in general, cultural issues opposed to the culture of the students.

Finally, once this proposal and application in the classes has been presented in a much more detailed way, a refinement of this activity has been carried out, analyzing the possible problems it presents, its strengths and, in general, the didactic theoretical benefits of this activity and the changes it implies with the textbook proposals.

Keywords:

Task-based activities, Spanish, Language, Travel.