About Masters for teachers of ELE<

About Masters for teachers of ELE

I am a teacher of Spanish for foreigners and since 2007 I have been working on and off with Instituto Hemingway. My relationship with the Instituto began thanks to a course offered for Spanish people to learn how to teach their language, which I enrolled on as soon as I had graduated from my studies in Spanish Philology. The course introduced me to the world of teaching, with which I had had no contact until that moment. I think it´s a great way to start getting to know not only your language, but other languages as well and, most importantly of all, how to teach your own.

You often hear the generalised thought that it´s enough to just be a Spanish native to become a Spanish teacher but, the fact is that native users of our language are not always able to recognize the mechanisms that govern it, explain the various linguistic phenomenon that occur, nor have the capacity to teach it in a suitable way. For the latter, prior knowledge and preparation are absolutely essential.

Thankfully I started to work straight away as a teacher, first with Hemingway and then for three years abroad in Italy. One thing that is certain is that, as with many things, true experience – not just in theory – comes from practice.

During my stay abroad, I worked in a variety of forms: individual classes, group classes, preparation for official exams, in various language schools and in a college. The tools that I learnt during my course helped me enormously for each different venture that I undertook, but I undoubtedly learnt the most by facing the things I didn´t know head on. I am always thinking of new ways to learn and improve my teaching technique and every day it becomes more and more evident that each course, each class and each student are different. This is why the job of a Spanish teacher, in addition to being prepared or having experience, also requires a large dose of empathy, flexibility and general passion for the job in hand.

In the last few years the choice of different courses for future teachers has grown massively, mainly according to the growing demand for Spanish language teaching, both within the Peninsula and abroad.

I am currently studying a Masters in teaching Spanish for foreigners in conjunction with Liceus, a centre associated with the University of Alcalá de Henares. It is a semi-present Masters, where almost the entire programme is online, with classes to attend only in July. Up until this point, the experience has been a very positive one.

To do a Masters or not to do a Masters?

Although Masters such as mine tend to demand Humanities degrees, it is unlikely that other degrees would be discounted (it depends on the Masters at hand and, above all, on the number of spare places) so effectively anyone interested in studying this Masters would be able to do so.

Undoubtedly, by doing a Masters, the material surrounding the world of teaching Spanish can be studied much more intensely and the focus is upon much more specific content. It is for precisely this reason that, in my opinion, it is always advisable to undertake such a Masters programme with some kind of teaching experience behind you. This allows us to take better advantage of the studies mentioned, as well as enjoying them more!

If, for example, you were to learn about different teaching materials: having been in direct contact with them, having had them in your hands, having worked with them and having seen their results will give us a much broader, more concrete and critical perspective than simply perceiving the examples as pure theory.

I don´t know much about other Masters of this kind, but if anyone is interested in this Masters programme from Liceus, there are many advantages: the semi-present nature, its status and its rice. Some of the topics that it deals with are: purely linguistic aspects, although always from the point of view of teaching (for example, teaching of the grammar, teaching of the lexis…) and other aspects related to teaching Spanish (language acquisition, methodology, programme design, creating teaching materials).

As regards disadvantages, I would say that this Masters programme requires a very constant work ethic. It involves a fairly intense workload and you have to make the notes and do all the exercises yourself (although they are always checked) but it is quite hard-going sometimes. Furthermore, be sure to consider the fact that the programme is “self-study”-based, and those interested in doing a Doctorate or dedicating themselves to a thesis should consult the most convenient options in agreement with the study reforms that are being carried out presently.