1. Quiero Comer

 

Song

 

Quiero Comer (I Want To Eat)

In this Language Dance activity we will be learning an important, and often used, phrase: “I want.” Or, in Spanish: “Quiero.”

 

First The Gestures

Those are our initial action words and gestures.

More on Gestures

I will begin by sharing a few words and phrases with you along with some accompanying gestures. For example, I will share the word comer (to eat). I will give you a chance to hear the word on its own. Then I will show you the gesture that goes along with the word. After you try the gestures along with the word, then it will be time to listen to the song and perform the gestures along with the song. But you must (I am urging you) you must try the gestures with the phrases. The best thing would be to get up and dance with the music. Just imagine when your friends ask how you got in such great shape learning Spanish.

Now the Song

Song (Quiero Comer)   Step 1: Download the song, load the song in your ipod or burn it to a cd, and listen to the song every once in a while when you get a chance. It is as simple as that. If you are interested in what the song sounds like, you might want to have a listen now. That will give you a chance to hear how the words and phrases repeat.

*** Just a quick note on downloading. These are rather large audio files. This song is close to eight minutes. So that is almost three times larger than most song files you may have downloaded in the past so they will take longer to download. You may have to be patient. Hopefully you will find that it is worth the wait.

 

[S3AUDIO file=’M111/QuieroComer.mp3′]

[S3FILE file=’M111/QuieroComer.mp3.zip’ anchor=’Download Quiero Comer’]

 

The first few songs in our Language Dance lesson focus on the action of wanting. I want (quiero).

Quiero is an important verb. A verb is simply an action word.

As human beings, for better or worse, we spend a great deal of our time ‘wanting.’ We feel desire. We have urges. We want to have or possess things. Young and old alike feel this. Think of young children before they can even talk—they are reaching out for this and that (and putting up quite a stink when they don’t get what they want).

Now, we don’t want to think of quiero as a word to memorize. We want to think of quiero as a feeling and action that we experience. Try this: hold your arms out in front of you, palms up, fingers slightly curled, and as you say “I want,” pull your hands toward you as if drawing that object of desire toward you. This is very different than simply saying a word, or reading a word. The whole action is incorporated into your understanding. That is the basis of Language Dance. Feel “Quiero.” You see, it is important to feel that feeling of wanting as we hear and say the word. We want to feel the feeling of desire. And, we represent and feel this with our bodies by imagining we are drawing something toward us as we say the phrase.

Now pull your hands toward you as if drawing that object of desire toward you and say Quiero. Quiero. You see, our brain is already wired to feel the feeling of wanting. By saying the phrase, imagining that we want something, and performing our gesture, we are wiring the phrase ‘quiero’ to our body’s physical wiring. You are not memorizing a phrase or word that is removed from your bodily experience. You are not wiring the image of a written word that exists outside of your body. You are wiring the phrase to your bodily action and desire.

You will notice that when you do this bodily movement your retention of the phrase is much better than had you tried to memorize the phrase by writing it down. This is not to say that you shouldn’t write the phase down. We will do that as well. That can help too. But initially we want to hear and feel directly with our bodies and allow our brains to make the connections for us.

 

 

Step 2: Feel the verbs comer, dormir, jugar and bailar by watching the video clip and imitating the gestures. I am going to begin by giving you five action words with gestures. The technical term for my word choice is collocation (co: together, and location: place). Collocation is the act of combining words that are naturally located together. ‘Quiero’ and ‘comer’ (‘I want’ and ‘to eat’) are words commonly placed together. So, rather than simply learning the word ‘comer,’ we learn the words in combination. These next phrases will seem obvious. But, as we move further into the lessons, we will often try to understand entire phrases rather than individual words. But more on that later.

 

Step 3: Now we can listen to the song and act out the phrases.

Download the song Quiero Comer and put it in your song library so that you can listen to it in the future.

 

Song Quiero Comer

quiero comer

quiero dormir

quiero jugar

quiero bailar


 

Step 4: Listen to Quiero Comer once a day, performing the gestures along with the song until you feel, and understand, the phrases.

 

Language Dance ™ © Knowledge Bundles 2012