Teaching Foreign Languages in Schools
Las ha puesto. This sort of exercise can be repeated by another student or by the teacher by simply changing the color and the number of the rods. The number of people performing the action can be changed as well, allowing for work in the conjugations of the auxiliary verb haber, and for the students themselves to generate the second person and third person plurals. After some proficiency is achieved, the exercise of reading on the charts and writing what has been done in a situation can be enlightening in terms of spelling and the logical manner in which haber is conjugated. Verbs for this particular exercise should be the kind whose action is easily perceived; action that can be separated clearly between the expression of the intent to act, the actual action and the expression of what has been done. (I have successfully used verbs such as tomar, escribir, construir and revolver with this exercise.) Encender is an example of a verb not to be used in the beginning because the time between the actual action and the expression of what has been done is so short that the voice cannot make a statement about what is being done before the action is completed. The rationale for using an irregular verb like poner instead of a regular verb in the beginning is that in Spanish, many of the most frequently used verbs are irregular. Therefore, the students may more readily accept the existence of irregularities in the present and past participles if the first ones they meet are irregular.
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