Register Shift When Responding to an Informal Text
Students must write a 250-word critical response in Spanish to a prescribed opinion column that argues young people read less because of mobile phones. The column uses colloquial register: 'los chavales pasan el día enganchados al móvil', direct address to the reader, rhetorical questions, and one sarcastic aside. A student's draft response opens: 'El autor dice que los chavales están enganchados al móvil y esto es verdad porque yo también lo veo.' The teacher's feedback says the response 'agrees with the text instead of analysing it' and 'borrows the column's register'. The student must still address the column's central claim and evaluate one rhetorical strategy, within the word limit, without lapsing into either imitation or mere summary.
1. Diagnose the two problems in the student's opening and explain what a critical response in Spanish requires instead.
Read the worked answer
Problem 1 - agreement replaces analysis. 'Esto es verdad porque yo también lo veo' offers personal corroboration, not evaluation. A critical response must interrogate the claim's basis: what evidence does the column offer, what does it leave out (e.g. reading on screens, different kinds of reading), and what does the generalisation hide?
Problem 2 - register contamination. 'Chavales' and 'enganchados' are the column's colloquial lexis. Quoting them is fine; adopting them as the student's own voice blurs the distance between critic and text. Academic Spanish for this task needs markers of attribution and evaluation: 'el autor sostiene que...', 'cabe objetar que...', 'el artículo presupone...', 'resulta llamativo que...'. Colloquial items should appear only inside quotation marks, framed by verbs of saying.
A critical response therefore does three things: attributes the claim precisely, examines the reasoning or rhetoric, and takes a position with reasons - not a personal anecdote standing in for argument.
2. Show how to quote one colloquial phrase and one rhetorical question from the column while maintaining analytical distance, in 3-4 sentences of Spanish.
Read the worked answer
Model: 'Al afirmar que «los chavales pasan el día enganchados al móvil», el columnista recurre a una hipérbole coloquial que convierte una tendencia discutible en un hecho evidente; la elección léxica no describe, sino que sentencia. Del mismo modo, la pregunta retórica con la que cierra el primer párrafo no busca una respuesta, sino que da por supuesto el asentimiento del lector. Ambos recursos construyen un tono de complicidad que refuerza la tesis a costa de excluir datos que la matizarían.'
Why this works:
- The colloquial phrase sits inside quotation marks, introduced by 'al afirmar que', so the words are attributed, not adopted.
- The rhetorical question is discussed functionally ('no busca una respuesta, sino que da por supuesto...'), showing analysis of strategy rather than paraphrase of content.
- Evaluative vocabulary ('hipérbole', 'sentencia', 'complicidad', 'a costa de excluir') carries the critical stance.
- The final sentence links both devices to an effect and a cost, which is the kind of judgement the task rewards.