Here’s a fun activity that can be used to practice second person POV and advice, suggestions or commands.  About a year ago, Direct TV ran a series of ads about what happens to you when you have trouble with your cable.  Each ad included a chain reaction of events and ended in a negative command.

I saw one of the commercials one day and thought, why not recreate the ads in Spanish?  We did it awhile ago in level 3, and it went very well.  Here’s what we did:

1. Watch the ads:  There are several on youtube.  Give students an idea of what they are trying to express.  You could do Movie Talk with the ads in the TL to get some input at this step.

2. Select the initial problem:  The Direct TV ads are all about cable.  Boring.  Change the initial problem to something relevant.  We went with, “Cuando no prestas atención en la clase de español . . . (When you don’t pay attention in Spanish class”.  From there, students can go any direction.

3. Select a final form: The last statement should be some kind of advice or suggestion.  In level 3, I wanted to practice subjunctive, so our final phrase was, “es importante que . . . ”  You could also require it to be a suggestion (No debes . . . ) or a negative command.

4. Requirements: Put students in groups and let them know how many steps must occur in their commercial.  I required 5.

5. Present: Students should present in class or record a video.  We presented in class because I didn’t want this activity to take a lot of time or require a lot of out-of-class work.  Videos are nice because they provide examples for future classes.