Some Fascinating Tidbits of Information about Spanish-Speaking Countries

Nov 5, 2018

Projects are one way to teach culture and language in the foreign language classroom.

In my Spanish 1 class, students had to do a Spanish-speaking country wiki project, and one of the things they were asked to do was to find a few facts about the country they were researching. Here are nine fun facts presented by students within those wikiprojects.

Panama is the only country in the world where you can see the sunrise on the Pacific and set on the Atlantic.

The two highest (by elevation) cities in the world are both in South America. La Paz, Bolivia is the first and Quito, Ecuador is the second.

The Chihuahua gets its name from the Mexican state of Chihuahua.

Costa Rica is the oldest democracy in the region of Central America.

The name of Argentina is from the Latin word argentum, for silver.

Spain was once divided into several kingdoms with different languages. Those languages are still spoken in Spain today.

The constitution of Bolivia recognizes 37 languages.

The United States once tried to buy Puerto Rico (and Cuba) from Spain for $160,000,000, but Spain rejected the offer. Puerto Rico is now a commonwealth of the United States.
Venezuela is home to the world’s longest waterfall, Angel Falls.

Learning a foreign language can be a lot of work, but it can also be enjoyable. Projects are a fun and engaging way to get students excited about the learning process.

Citations

http://factsking.com/countries/panama/

https://www.worldatlas.com/articles/the-highest-capital-cities-in-the-world.html

http://www.akc.org/dog-breeds/chihuahua/

https://costarica.org/facts/government/

https://www.factslides.com/i-5064

http://ushistoryscene.com/article/puerto-rico/

https://geology.com/records/highest-waterfall.shtml

About the Author

Diana Lamolinara is a native speaker of Spanish who has lived in the Spanish-speaking countries of Puerto Rico, Venezuela, and Spain. She also lived several years in Italy, where she studied Italian. Mrs. Lamolinara has a BS in Business Administration and a BA in Foreign Language Education from the University of Maryland, College Park. Diana has been teaching Spanish to students at all levels from Pre School to AP for over 25 years. She is a former homeschooling mom. In addition to teaching, Diana enjoys reading, exercising, cooking and taking long walks with her dog in the woods. The Lord has blessed Diana and her husband with four children and three grandchildren.

The thoughts and opinions expressed are those of the author and should not be taken to represent the views of Excelsior Classes, LLC or the consortium of teachers.