logo-ih

Shopping cart

  • Duration: weeks

    Start date:

    Total:

    Enrollment fee:

  • Duration: weeks

    Start date:

    Total accommodation:

Total:

UPCOMING FREE ACTIVITIES
blog-img
Spanish courses in Bilbao
July 21, 2015
Paloma Fagil Fernández

Yesterday i was on a terrace drinking with some friends. I had just got to know one of them and when they asked what my career was, i answered precisely ´a globetrotting spanish teacher.´

Since I finished my career, the truth is that i have been fortunate enough not to stop. In my first entry in this blog a few years ago, i wrote about my experience as an assistant in France and everything that i had learnt from the spanish course at instituto hemingway.
Since then, I have devoted myself to teaching in two countries.

Firstly, through the European Voluntary Service program, I left Tallinn (Estonia) and i became an assistant English teacher at a school in extracurricular activities for russian children and teenagers. At the same time, i was offered the opportunity to teach English. I helped prepare students for the Cambridge exams.
When I was in Estonia, I got a job at a Chinese university for the following year. I lived for three years in a town called Jinan , which is the capital of Shandong Province (east China). The first two years i worked mainly as an English teacher but also was offered the opportunity to teach spanish.

Fortunately, I had already prepared some Spanish books aimed at Chinese students, which were very helpful in general. Also, I brought my own materials. The students studied English Philology and decided to try their luck with a third language. They were very hardworking, so teaching them was a pleasure. Being the first time they had Spanish, what they found most difficult (and a bit overwhelming), like for all Chinese, was the pronunciation of the ´r´consonant. I advised them to stay calm and that they didn´t get stressed out, as it was only normal that they found it difficult to begin with. I also told them it was all a matter of practice.

Because the course lasted a few months, I decided to focus on ´travelling spanish´, ie how to greet, numbers, colors, how to order food in a restaurant, etc. Inevitably, I had to put a little grammar in the middle, but the essential minimum because i considered it more important to focus on the communicative part. For each topic, I gave a basic vocabulary through various exercises (associations, etc.)
As always, some found it more difficult than others. Several pleasantly surprised me after the course as they could communicate well and even had good pronunciation for beginners.

For my third and final year in China I exclusively taught Spanish Philology students. In this country many times you can find, that apart from the usual teaching skills (oral and written comprehension and oral and written) expression, you have to take subjects like History and Culture of Spain, reading press in Spanish, Writing Thesis Projects or Spanish Literature. At first, it is a little cramped, but over the weeks, it´s morepractical when having to prepare lessons. So if any of you go to China to teach Spanish, I advise bringing good materials to such subjects. Otherwise, searching the Internet, I usually find what I need. We must be prepared for everything)

This past year I have learned a lot and gained a great experience. I consider it essential that, before you start, you should organise the class, do a little research, find out what the students needs are, what interests them and take into account the country today. To meet the interests of students, it is always a good solution to make them fill out an anonymous questionnaire, write on the blackboard a question and answer them on sheets of paper that after you gather and can read at home.

Furthermore, I like to encourage class discussion and talk about various topics (provided they are adequate). Also, I consider it essential to encourage creativity. To this end, what I do is explain a vocabulary that is often used in a given situation (for example, the language we use when talking about mobile phones: "Give me a call", "send me an whatsapp message", etc.) ; then students should write dialogues that include these expressions and interpret them in front of peers. Another exercise that works very well is to give comic strips without dialogue so that students can invent new conversations and then act them out infront of the rest of the class.

In China classes are often very large, so the best thing you can do, especially in speaking classes, is make the students work in pairs or small groups.

On the other hand, you can have everything prepared for the class in your head, but if an activity does not work as expected, simply improvise or think of a new one. Likewise, if students are interested in dealing with an topic that was not in the program, but that is suitable for the class, do not worry if you have to change what you had previously prepared.

Finally, I wanted to thank Alfredo his help everytime i contacted him to give me suggestions on teaching books, as his ideas were always brilliant.
Happy summer!

Social media Compartir
Need help?
Online Support!
Need help? Chat with us on Whatsapp