Radio Ambulante Podcast

A podcast-based unit for Levels 3 and up. Students will dive into an ethical question as they learn the story of a public confrontation between the President of Ecuador and a regular citizen, while sharpening their listening and reading skills.

About the project

I love the Radio Ambulante podcast. It is full of relevant cultural content and also provides great listening opportunities for students. Of course, you have to choose the episode you want to use in the classroom carefully because both the level and the speed of the spoken language in the podcasts can be challenging. The speakers represent a variety of accents found across South America which makes for great exposure and can also require some scaffolding for students. It is a rich resource of cultural happenings, discussions of politics and current events, history and literature from the Latin American world, providing authentic perspectives from the people of this continent.

I often listen to Radio Ambulante on my way to work in the morning. It’s a great way to sharpen my own listening skills while learning so much about Latin America. When I first discovered this podcast, I knew immediately that I wanted to use it in my classroom and began to think about how to break it down to make it accessible for my students. One of the first episodes I heard was Crudo vs. Correa, a compelling story of a public, virtual battle between the then-President of Ecuador, Rafael Correa, and the owner of a satirical Facebook page called Crudo Ecuador. It was relevant, engaging and complex. I knew I would have to think carefully about how to structure it before I could present it to my students. The project outlined here offers a complete description of strategies and activities to make this an instructional unit of study.

Project details

  • Level: Spanish Intermediate (Level 3), Advanced (Level 4, 5), IB SL/HL

  • Inquiry Question: ¿Cómo pueden co-existir la libertad de expresión y el derecho a la privacidad en una democracia? (How can freedom of speech co-exist with the right to privacy in a democracy?)

  • Authentic Material: Radio Ambulante’s podcast Crudo vs. Correa 

  • Grammatical Structures : El pluscuamperfecto, pretérito e imperfecto

  • Final Assessment: Students create a podcast centered around the essential question of the unit using Soundtrap.

Content and Language Learning Objectives:

  • Understand the events of a public conflict between an Ecuadorian President and citizen centered around a satirical Facebook page

  • Articulate ideas about freedom of speech and the right to privacy

  • Compare and contrast the role of political satire in the US (or students’ native countries) and Ecuador

  • Learn to listen for understanding to an authentic podcast episode in Spanish

  • Use the plusquamperfect, along with the preterite and imperfect tenses to describe events in the past

  • Use technology to create an original podcast about a current event

Materials & activities

Introduction and Activating Background Knowledge

In order to prepare students for listening, we move along three parallel tracks: discussion of students’ ideas of freedom of speech (libertad de expresión) and right to privacy (el derecho a la privacidad), getting to know the two protagonists of the story, and using something they know only too well – MEMES – but en español, as the story begins with a meme. And since the podcast refers to events in Ecuador, you can also do a little orienting activity like finding the country and its capital on a map, and eliciting any information that the students might already know about the country.

Introducción

This presentation contains different slides that I use on different days as we progress through the unit. The first eight slides are introductory and help students to start thinking about the two concepts mentioned above and introduce them to the people in the story. Of course, all of this takes place in the target language.

Vocabulario

Introduce some of the vocabulary that students can use while discussing the concepts of freedom of speech and right to privacy. This is a list of words that I hand out and have students work on before we start talking about what the two concepts mean. Since there are some cognates in there, I have them do a matching exercise with the words on the top half of the sheet and possibly define any of the words they might know in the bottom half, but they can also keep those to fill in as we move along in the unit.

Conceptos

Have the students talk about the two concepts using the questions on slides 2 and 3, either in groups or pairs and share out their ideas (a Think, Pair, Share thinking routine can work well here) as you write them somewhere for everyone to see (there is also space on slide 3 to write in their ideas). Importantly, make a list on the board or somewhere to the side with all the useful new vocabulary that comes up in the discussion. This becomes the list of words that you can then practice over and over, in many different ways, in the next few classes. This process of adding vocabulary through discussions and activities will take place several times in the course of the unit. I like to keep this list open-ended, depending on the needs of the class and the type of discussion we end up having.

El post final de Crudo Ecuador acerca de este tema

Memes

Use slides 6 and 7 to show a few examples of memes and have a discussion about what role memes play in social media and people’s lives. Young people love memes, so they should have plenty of thoughts to share! This is a good time to introduce vocabulary such as satírico, burlarse de, chistoso, etc.

Personajes

The last preparation activity is to introduce the protagonists of the story using slides 4 and 5. Additional materials I use to do this are an interview with Rafael Correa in English (with Spanish subtitles) and Crudo Ecuador’s Facebook page, which students can take some time to browse through. The aim is for students to understand who the two individuals are and to what they do/did. They use this worksheet to identify some adjectives that they think describe the two protagonists. For information on Crudo Ecuador, they can also listen to the section of the podcast from 2:22 to 4:28.

Delving into Content

Students are now ready to start listening to the podcast and begin to make sense of the story. It is important to break up the listening into chunks and work on understanding the key events of the story. This story actually lends itself well to being broken up chronologically. Also, since the key grammatical structures the students will see over and over are the preterite and imperfect, it might be a good idea to also plug in a quick review (in context!) of these two structures. Lastly, depending on the level of the students, you can either have them listen to the podcast, or listen while reading along in the written the script (available on the Radio Ambulante website).

An effective way to have students listen to chunks of the podcast is to let them work at their own speed. Give them the limits of the portion you want them to listen to (where to begin and where to end) and a task sheet to go along with it to check for understanding. I used various types of activities such as a true/false (in my presentation, slides 14 and 15), a cloze activity, embedded grammar practice in context and simple Q&A checks available in my presentation slides and on this page.

Key Components of the Story

The new law (slide 9) and the result of the law (slide 13): La ley y el resultado de la ley.

  • The first meme published by Crudo Ecuador (slide 14) that had an impact on the public and made it popular: El primer meme que tuvo un impacto en la página de Crudo Ecuador.

  • The meme that caused all the trouble between Correa and Crudo (slides 18 and 19): El meme que causó todos los problemas.

  • The consequences of the public attack on Crudo Ecuador’s Facebook page on the part of the President (text of podcast here): Las consecuencias del ataque público por parte del Presidente a la página de Crudo Ecuador.

  • The public revelation of Crudo’s identity (text of podcast here): La revelación pública de la identidad de Crudo.

  • How the story ends (slide here): Como termina la historia.

El meme que le dio la fama a Crudo Ecuador

La página de Crudo Ecuador en Facebook

Final Project/Assessment

The final assessment that I’ve used in the past is a debate-style oral evaluation accompanied by a written piece. I have also had students create a podcast on a current social event in our community using Soundtrap as a tech tool. I’ve used Soundtrap (link above in myself to create a podcast in a workshop that I attended recently, and is an authentic way to use technology as students take on the role of professional podcasters and can share their podcast with other Spanish classes. I am also happy to share more information on the debate style evaluation if you email me using the form at the bottom of the page.

Additional Materials/Resources

PowerPoint presentation with various slides to be used during the course of the unit.

I hope this information was helpful! I would love to connect with you if you have any questions. Please feel free to submit the form below with your query and I will respond as soon as possible.

Let’s connect

I hope this information was helpful! I would love to connect with you if you have any questions. Please feel free to submit the form below with your query and I will respond as soon as possible. I also have a few additional materials to share, if you want more!