My Experience and training teaching Spanish as a Foreign Language to Norwegians<

My Experience and training teaching Spanish as a Foreign Language to Norwegians

My training and experience as a teacher of foreign languages began some years ago, as English as well as a Spanish teacher.  At the end of the day, in both cases you are teaching a language as a foreign language, you are following a work methodology, you are preparing classes  and, in short, you are teaching somebody to communicate.

With regard to my education, I have a degree in Translation and Interpretation. I read a Master´s in Audiovisual Translation and I have done a specialist course in Orthotypography and the stylistic rules of the Spanish language. Nevertheless, the intensive and exhaustive preparation that I had to carry out for the selection exams to become a Secondary School English Teacher was, in my opinion, critical in allowing me to study the communicative approach and in learning how to structure and to pass on the knowledge of a foreign language to teenage pupils.  They were nine hard months of learning and studying, of creating teaching units and of making corrections to improve the planning of the units and the scheduling of the teaching program.

As for my experience, thanks to my good mark in the selection exams, I began to work in a state school as an English teacher in the very same year. This allowed me to find-out at first-hand what works and what does not work, how to gain the attention of my pupils and about their preferred learning styles.  I learnt that each class is a world, regardless of whether these pupils have the same level as those from other groups.

I also learnt how important it was to try to adapt to this group, in terms of the teaching level to make sure that they achieved the level required by law as well in terms of the resources I used to motivate them.

On the other hand, my experience as a teacher of Spanish as a foreign language dates back to the 2007, when I began to give classes to Norwegians who wanted to learn and improve their  Spanish level.  Since then, they have remained my pupils, every summer for quite a while now, as well as my friends.  The creation of a close rapport is a bonus that I have experienced whilst teaching Spanish as a Foreign Language to adult pupils and it is something that a school does not provide. The culture enrichment is greater, since there are two different cultures, mine and my pupils´ and the pupils are more interested in learning the language. All this led me to carry out this course with the aim of training as a teacher of Spanish as a Foreign Language and therefore being able to open doors to another type of foreign language teaching that makes me fall more in love with my own language every day and that motivates me to get outside and to explore others cultures and other languages.