The students AP students of Spanish have studied Spanish for several years. They have mastered the fundamental rules of Spanish grammar, and they have been introduced to several Hispanic cultures at glance during years of language study. These students are prepared to encounter and study diversity within the Hispanic world.

The study of a specific Hispanic culture requires quality time allotments. These enable students to read, write, analyze, and discuss the culture studied. As they study a particular culture, they acquire language and culture knowledge simultaneously. This is ultimately the goal of true language acquisition: to learn a language through its culture.

This unit presents AP communicative skills that reflect research of students on Puerto Rico. Each has been is assigned a municipality of the country, and the student is to connect his or her municipality with another one. The students then create and tell a Puerto Rican story with pictures, drawings, and realia of Puerto Rico.

The expectations of this project reflect a cultural approach for expanding AP communicative skills. Students share what they have learned as they tell their stories by recording them using computer technology. They also provide a reference script page of the story along with key vocabulary and grammar for usage of interested AP language students.

The culture of Puerto Rico is an excellent resource of knowledge for AP students of Spanish. It presents a microcosm of Caribbean and US diversity. Students will benefit from exploring and learning about Puerto Rican history, geography, regional vocabulary, and current issues affecting the environment of the island. Therefore, the goals of this project mirror those of cultural diversity and foreign language standards at large, which, through thematic two-minute stories connect to the National Standards of Foreign Languages (ACTFL).

The students will:

• Research the history, geography, and environment of Puerto Rico;
• Create a story on an assigned Puerto Rican municipality;
• Record story and provide access to script,key vocabulary and grammar;
• Incorporate project for access to the Worldwide Web.
• Practice for AP Spanish language examination.

1. The students are assigned a municipality, and they collect information and realia that is representative of it. Then they will create a story-vignette referent to six pictures of any Puerto Rican municipalities, and how they connect to the one municipality they were assigned. For example, how a citizen of San Juan leaves his home to study music in San Germán. They assigned municipality of San Juan is the beginning picture that will take the listener on a trip to San Germán, and, if possible, through any another municipality of the island.
   
   
2. The students will write a script of the story and a list of the major grammar points and vocabulary used in telling it. This script is the story, and is used as a resource guide for AP students of Spanish. The content of the script reflects the acquisition of native vocabulary, as the Taino vocabulary, and a summary of everyday and new idiomatic expressions. The latter displays a cultural approach to this project.
   
   
3. The students will develop an overall communicative activity using pictures that relate a cultural and geographical experience of Puerto Rico to interested parties. Their story of six pictures is told sequentially using transitional words and verbal moods, especially the subjunctive mood, but never underestimating the usage of the indicative and the imperative moods. Moreover, the story exemplifies mastery of usage of these moods and cultural research of the island of Puerto Rico. The narration of the story is performed extemporaneously as to a simulated Spanish-speaking section of the AP Spanish Language Exam. However, some memorization is required in order to record correctly the lines of the story. See "Story Steps".