Epic Poetry in Spanish Lessons: Cantar de Mio Cid
Rita Mercedes Begines Cid
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Introduction
Living in a world where our lives revolve around gadgets, it is always challenging to select texts and excerpts for units to successfully engage high school students. It is even harder to make students engage with classic literature. What is more, the language of instruction might not even be their dominant language in the case of bilingual students. As teachers we constantly face some, if not all of these challenges when devising curricular planning. Thus, this unit is aimed at making epic poems known, understood and appealing to high school students as well as showing the didactic possibilities epic poems have to offer in the Spanish language classes to contribute to the development of linguistic structures while the students enjoy the reading of these stories.
In this line, the students for whom this unit is designed (high school or native and heritage Spanish speakers or given the case, high school level IV non-native students). They will be working with a didactic strategy that involves the development of thinking and improves their writing, reading and oral communication skills by using a poem from the Middle Ages as well as its adapted version (El Poema de Mio Cid) and learning vocabulary that makes them increase their knowledge in this field.
