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Ritmos

Beginning College Spanish

“This is the first language textbook that I genuinely love! I love the culture-centric approach to language learning.

I love that my students get to explore meaningful and interesting topics and connect with a variety of voices and perspectives.”

Professor Claire Knowles

Ritmos User

Transformative Learning

Centered on proficiency

Ritmos is a beginning college Spanish textbook that emphasizes both language proficiency AND cultural learning. It provides learners with a transformative learning experience, designed not primarily to inform but to reform and change lives. If you want your elementary Spanish courses to have an impact on your learners and your program, you will want to try out Ritmos!

Focus on speaking and listening

Comprehensible input is essential for language acquisition. Ritmos provides a wealth of input via reading and listening. Speaking activities and tasks based on this input provide numerous opportunities for learners to communicate in Spanish about what they are learning and how their viewpoints are changing, based on what they are learning about the cultures of Spanish speaking regions. Your students will talk and interact more with Ritmos!

Five driving forces behind Ritmos

Five driving forces

behind Ritmos

1. Culture as context

Ritmos teaching cultural content that “builds context”, addressing topics that create curiosity about Spanish-speaking countries and giving students cultural information they can use to begin conversations with Spanish speakers. The greatest barrier to communicating is not language per se but having things in common to communicate about. Ritmos addresses this need for beginning learners!

2. Transformative Learning

The most important outcome of a language course is changed lives: learners who are willing and able to use their newly acquired language and cultural learning. Ritmos is designed to help you make your Spanish course a life-changing experience for your students. All our work teaching learners doesn’t pay off if they don’t actually use what they learn!

3. Multiple Elements

The content with Ritmos is shared equally between the online interactive website, where students have access to hundreds of interviews, cultural texts and vocabulary activities, and the book which provides reading, writing prompts and classroom activities. This makes Ritmos an excellent choice for remote and blended instruction, as students have plenty to do and learn from outside the classroom.

4. Quality input

Ritmos provides a tremendous amount of interesting comprehensible input from native and native-like speakers in Spanish-speaking countries. Scaffolding activities and preparation enable students to engage with these texts successfully. Emphasizing native-level listening, scaffolded and aimed at learners, also prepares students to communicate with Spanish speakers outside of the classroom without panicking since they are accustomed to the patterns and rhythm of native-like speech.

5. Motivate Students

Classroom activities are designed to help students express themselves, make cultural comparisons, and get to know their classmates.  Speaking activities are not rote drills to practice language but genuine opportunities for authentic communication. Better relationships and more cultural curiosity mean better learning and also greatly increases the chances that your students will continue studying Spanish!

Two required components

Ritmos features a robust textbook/workbook hybrid, or cuaderno, as well as an equally important interactive online platform for work that happens best outside of class. Each of these supports the other and is vitally important to a complete course.

Interactive Website

The Ritmos interactive website features hundreds of audio and video clips from Spanish speakers across the world, including scaffolding activites to ensure students comprehend what they hear. This authentic, content-rich input accustoms your students to native Spanish. The website also includes hundreds of explanatory texts on history and culture of each country, rich photography to familiarize students with the visual culture of these places, and vocabulary and grammar introduction and reinforcement activities.

Cuaderno

The Ritmos cuaderno is split into two volumes that cover a year-long course together. It is designed to transition students from the receptive mode of the website to guided comprehension of authentic texts and then production in the classroom and written assignments. Many small group and conversational activity prompts in the cuaderno encourage learners to talk about their own lives, helping create a real community in your classroom as students get to know one another.

Click the image to the right to see a short sample from unit 3 of the Ritmos cuaderno, with special callouts of important features.

Request digital evaluation package

Request digital

evaluation package

If you are looking for an invigorating journey through the Spanish-speaking world for your intermediate students, materials that are as energized about Spanish language and culture as you are, and support for a course that can change a student’s life, then Rostros will be the perfect fit for you. Fill out the form below to request an evaluation copy and to speak with one of the creators.

Fill out the form below to get in touch with us and request an evaluation package. 

If you are a current student using Ritmos and need help, please visit our Support Page.

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