Learning Spanish through the culinary traditions of Latin America

3/15/2017

Amanda Fleites Alfonso & María Ximena Venturini,
PhD Students & Teaching Assistants
Department of Spanish and Portuguese

On February 23rd, the Introductory Spanish II class, SPAN 1020, made a trip to the Ideal Market, a Latin American food market located in Mid City, New Orleans. Tulane students who participated in this Department of Spanish and Portuguese course have studied about food and nutrition in recent weeks. A visit to the Ideal Market was an excellent opportunity to give students a practical application for what they have learned in the classroom.

Because the market has a wide variety of fruits, vegetables, and products of Latin American origin, the Ideal Market was the perfect venue for our class to have a real-world experience to learn about these products. Additionally, the market's workers are people from Spanish-speaking countries, which allowed students to have conversations in Spanish, practicing grammatical structures and vocabulary. Students tried the different flavors of the typical dishes of Hispanic cuisine, opened their culinary horizons to new flavors, and discovered a little more about the fascinating culture that exists on the other side of the continent.

It was an enriching experience for our class. We had fun learning in a real communicational situation, which makes the students feel more motivated to learn the language. After this experience, some have repeated the visit to the Ideal Market, and all were so excited that we are already planning other similar activities for the next semester.

The Introductory Spanish II class, SPAN 1020, ate Ideal Market, a Latin American food market
On February 23rd, the Introductory Spanish II class, SPAN 1020, made a trip to the Ideal Market, a Latin American food market located in Mid City, New Orleans.