Business Spanish Lesson Plan Week 3

by Ann Abbott

SPANISH FOR BUSINESS: WEEK 3

Day 1: Lectura comercial

Today we begin Chapter two of Éxito comercial: La empresa. Specifically we will tackle the Lectura comercial and do some related activities. Before coming to class, students were to read that section of the ebook and take the quiz on MindTap. In class, we did the following: 

Conversación

I try to always give my students time to ¨warm up¨ at the beginning of class by talking to each other in Spanish. I put them in pairs in Zoom breakout rooms and told them they could talk about anything, in Spanish.

Sociedad anónima, S.A.

Reading about all the different forms of businesses can be very confusing, both in English and Spanish. I really only want students to walk away with a couple of concepts from this chapter. One is that S.A. at the end of a business´ name is the same as Inc. I showed them my husband´s company and explained that its official name is ISS, Inc. I also told them about my dad's business, Abbott Tank Company, Inc., showed them what a tank battery looks like and shared with them the FB post about my dad's tanks still out in the field.

Then we switched to examples of sociedades anónimas in Spanish speaking countries. I assigned each student one of the lesser-known companies from this list (Bimbo, S.A.; HSBC, S.A.; Molinos Río de la Plata, S.A.; Alpura, S.A.; Laboratorios Bagó, S.A.; and Grupo LALA, S.A. I gave them three minutes to explore their company individually. Then I paired them in breakout rooms and gave them three minutes to present their company to the other person. After the time, I followed up with a few of the pairs.

Sociedad de Responsibilidad Limitada, S de RL

I told them that LLCs have become very popular. There´s nothing inherently wrong with them, but you hear about them in scandals, for example, the LLCs that Michael Cohen created to hid Donald Trump´s hush money payments to women. 

To sum up, we looked at two different companies. Half the class explored Mabe, S.A. and the other half explored el Grupo Pascual, a cooperative. After three minutes, I put them into groups of three in breakout rooms and gave them three minutes to share with the others what they had learned.

Tamaño

Finally, I told them about PYMEs and emphasized that in the US, too, small businesses employ the most people and are the engine of our economy, even though big businesses and multinationals get all the attention.

Al teléfono

Finally, I played the book´s telephone conversation with them. I had them answer the book´s first question in Zoom´s chat, then sent them to yet another breakout room to answer the rest of the questions.

That was it. One hour passed by very quickly. I must say, I am enjoying my students on Zoom, and I am trying to keep up a lively pace through engaging activities and time to be accountable through breakout room discussions and followup questions when we are back together.

Day 2: Lectura cultural

As always, we will begin the class with 5 minutes "Conversar sin parar." Today they will talk about "la familia" since that is part of the lesson.

La lectura

I will point out a few key concepts from the reading and then quickly move on to activities. However, I think it's important to ask the students to name well-known families from the US who are in business together. In this way, we can see that this is not just a characteristic of families in Spanish-speaking countries and that here, too, we see clear negative examples of nepotism.

Actividades

From the section 2-7 Actividades: 

• In pairs and in breakout rooms, students will answer question 1.b.
• We will read the Mni-drma cultural. In groups of three, they will find specific examples of how the conversation reflects (or not) concepts from the reading.

From Orlando Kelm's collection of interviews with business professionals:  

• We will watch the first and third videos from "Pushy Americans" and discuss.
• From the "Limited Cultural Knowledge" section, I will assign each student one of the videos to watch. Then in pairs, in breakout rooms, they will present the information from their video to each other. They might not understand everything said in the video, so they can watch it together, too, if necessary.