Several years ago my colleague and I launched a bit of an experiment.  We looked at the idiomatic expressions that caused our students a great deal of trouble, but that were high frequency phrases.

Our choices for first-year students included:

Llamarse  (to call oneself)

Tener años   (to “have” years)

Divertirse    (to enjoy oneself…you cannot “have fun” in Spanish!)

For second-year students we chose:

Acabarse de  (to have just done something)

Hay que  (to “have to” )

Tener ganas (to have the desire/to want)

Volver a (to repeat/do again)

We decided to try a little experiment and introduced those phrases as early as possible in the year.  This way we could give the students the greatest amount of exposure to these difficult to acquire idioms.

IN ADDITION, if there were a more “English-friendly” version of the phrase, we would delay or diminish their exposure to it.

For example:

We did not give students the word for “name” until several months into the first-year course…not until we really felt that they had started to absorb, comprehend and utilize “to call oneself”.    We also delay their exposure to the word “fun” until their second year of study.     Without an “English-ish” option available, their acquiring minds would go more quickly and easily to the idiom in Spanish.    Later, when we did introduce them to “nombre” and “divertido” we found far fewer students using llamarse and divertirse inappropriately.  We also found fewer students confusing “nombre” and “número” or coming up with the dreaded “Tengo divertido.” 

In the second year, we stopped using “tener que” in favor of “hay que” and “querer” in favor of “tener ganas”.     This doubled the amount of exposure to the new phrases and helped students to add them to their lexicon instead of constantly reverting to the “easier” Spanish. 

If anyone has done something similar, please let me know.  I’d love to know your results!

With love,

Laurie