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