Spanish classes with a chorizo flavour
A Japanese television crew records a programme to learn Spanish with a theme based on the province’s meat products.
Did you like the chorizo? The answer from Japanese citizens is a resounding yes. A Japanese public television crew visited the capital to record a Spanish language learning programme about the verb gustar (to like) and the preparation of chorizo in the province.
“The experience was very good, we had a lot of fun and so did they, although we didn’t understand them because they didn’t speak any Spanish”, says teacher María José Gago.
As a butchery teacher at the Centro de Referencia Nacional de Industrias Alimentarias, based in Salamanca, this native of Zamora knows animal anatomy inside out, and so she taught it to the participating students and the Japanese who came to her butcher’s shop. “Everything was new to them, but they became familiar with it as they saw how the children entered the classroom and were not shy about touching the meat, the entrails…”, says Gago, who motivates the children by comparing them to researchers who discover things unknown to them.
Through the Japanese embassy in Madrid, the Japanese television channel contacted María José about the possibility of making a programme in Zamora, to which she was “delighted” to respond. It was a Japanese boy who took his interest in finding out more about pork and its derivatives back to his country, “as he had attended one of the workshops we give in the butcher’s shop for groups and schools, and he was very interested and came up with the idea”, she explains.
Did you like chorizo?
The channel on which the programme, the 17th in the series to learn Spanish, is shown is one of the two state-owned channels on Japanese television, and is devoted entirely to language teaching through lessons that cover the different countries, expressions, verbs and vocabulary of Spain, France, Italy and Germany.
The other mainstay of state television is a 24-hour news channel. “The Japanese are very aware of the importance of education and languages, and these lessons are followed up with dossiers that they buy and learn languages at home,” she says.
15 kilos of meat, 30 children and a great desire to learn came together in the butcher’s shop of the protagonist, who provided many words to increase the Japanese people’s knowledge of the organs and parts of the body. “They took away a lot of material that could even be used for more programmes, because all parts of the body came out during the workshop, as well as expressions related to cooking and typical spontaneous conversations of the children,” says the butchery teacher.
Source: El Correo de Zamora
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