Activities Manual to Accompany Pura Vida Beginning Spanish

Culture, culture, culture! In Pura Vida, Spanish is more than vocabulary and grammar, and Spanish-speaking cultures are more than products and practices. Pura vida is the discovery of a Spanish-speaking world through the experiences of real people that students can relate to, who share anecdotes and reflections on their experiences. Students make deeper, more meaningful connections between language and culture than in other programs and acquire Spanish with an unparalleled sense of personal engagement. Students don’t only learn Spanish for real life, but also from real life, discovering that there is not just one homogeneous Hispanic culture, but rather that each Spanish-speaking country has its own rich, unique culture and that the people who live in these countries speak one common language with different accents, characteristics, and idiosyncrasies. This first-edition program offers truly seamless integration of cultural notions and language instruction, and features 100% contextualized and personalized activities.

Norma López-Burton is the Director of the First Year Spanish Program at the University of California Davis. Her areas of expertise include second language acquisition and curriculum development. She has been honored twice with university-wide awards and numerous grants.

Laura Marques Pascual is the author of Pura vida: Beginning Spanish, published by Wiley.