The course for Spanish teachers and new worries<

The course for Spanish teachers and new worries

Seeing as I have nearly completed this course, I have been reflecting over it, what it has brought to me and also over the question of whether if to teach a language, it is necessary or, better said, essential to learn about the teaching methodologies or simply one has to have a deep understanding of the learning itself. All of you who have finished this course or even those of you who are starting it will have realized that to teach a language is much more than to know it, to be able to explain yourself in actual situations with it, etc.
Perhaps this reflection that I present to you seems lackluster in content, but for me, I studied a degree in Translation and Interpretation and my classmates, or at least many of them, have dedicated themselves directly to teaching due to the simple fact of knowing the ins and outs of a language and of knowing its grammatical rules and of its usage, is a point that is at least interesting.
I have to confess that at the start the fact of learning the different methodologies seemed to me something lacking meaning and I was keen to read the topic that dealt about the grammar and the difficulties that are faced by a Spanish student that doesn’t speak any Spanish. However, when I came to the activity in which I had to propose different activities of learning and of organising a class, the methodologies prevailed over my former opinion and I started to understand why I had to learn them. Indeed, it is necessary and furthermore imperative to get to know the difficulties of others when they are learning the language itself, as is it vital to get to know how to transfer this knowledge. In fact on many occasions you can sin easily as a teacher by just using confirmations for example ‘this is like this because it is and everyone says it in this way’. Who has never heard such a categorical confirmation? Although one who is fluent in a language may be able to solve some issues that appear when learning a language, it is a different fact altogether to know how to teach the language so that naturally the student does this himself, as I said previously although in a slightly different way.
Therefore I add another thought to my reflection: ‘who can teach a language better? A native speaker or a person that has dedicated himself to study that language and that has been completed immersed linguistically in that country in which they dominate the language? Once the debate over the importance of knowing and of being aware of different teaching methodologies and having moved on from the base that both (the native speaker and the person that has learned the language in total immersion) types of teacher are valid for teaching the language to some extent, consider which might be the response. I don’t know if I am looking at this in the wrong way, but I also base myself around the thought of which of these people would be able to translate and/or interpret ‘better’ (I am referring with the word ‘better’, to with more quality and a greater closeness to the linguistic nuances of the language), if the person is native or if that person is not and for me the answer is simple: the native person. Because considering the same training and same knowledge, in this case about who would translate ‘better’, it is clear that a non-native speaker is not going to use the same nuances and recourses that the other person would, even with as much learning as has been done by that person, even in a total linguistic immersion context (it is clear that I am not talking of being bilingual).
So, I leave you with two thoughts so that you can comment on them: - To teach a language, is it necessary to know the different teaching methodologies and to have teaching qualifications? – Given the same training who would be able to teach ‘better’ a language: a person, native in the language that they teach or another that has learnt it and that is in total linguistic immersion? – If there is anyone that has also studied Translation and Interpretation or simply someone that wants to give their opinion on the question: Who translates ‘better’, a person native in that language or someone that has learnt it and who is in a total immersion context? I hope you have found the debate that I have presented here interesting!