Courses for ELE teachers<

Courses for ELE teachers

Just a year ago I completed my training with becoming a teacher for foreign languages. An important aspect of the course was the profound reflection on the social beliefs that lie behind the learning of languages.

Sometimes I have the feeling that living within a culture doesn’t mean anymore to learn the language. Today it seems to be more of an intellectual activity. New sciences such as neuropsychology and neurolinguistics prove that there is a neurological framework that supports learning, understanding, production and expression of languages. Among the long list of neurological skills that a child acquires during the first years of life there are a lot of skills it needs for automatic functions.

Our mother tongue provides certain automatic series: the days of the week, months of the year, the alphabet, number sequences etc. When one element is used the brain automatically findes all the group to which it belongs. This is one of the mechanisms that allows us to express something oral and we get fluidity. To produce a word we need the help of a “manager” that coordinates the complicated neurological mechanism that is behind speaking. This neurological “manager” is responsible for unconscious processes and speech production among with its language transfer.

When a child learns to speak this learning acquires specific mechanisms. During the first five years of life the neurological manager prepares to make the first language transfers. This will be the acquisition of reading and writing. The child will become aware of its skills and will learn through the intellectual structures that it has already acquired in the unconscious. I observed this in many cases and the methodology proposed to address intellectual learning. When we talk about tenses for example we usually have present, past and future. We will ask the children to learn them by heart and without establishing a relationship.

The name of a tense for a child is usually very complicated and does not provide any clue to help it with the linguistic transfer. The result is that the child has hard time memorizing tenses. In order to express experiences, projects, orders, questions or desires it is necessary to know tenses. I suggest that children who have delays in language learning, make a list of things they have done during the day, to learn to focus and remember. Automatically by then the neurological manager starts and children relate the activities to use the present perfect. At this point they start to get aware of the concept. When it comes to the time to memorize tenses they just have to tell themselves the tense to describe the list of activities they did. This linguistic transfer encourages creating a connection between the knowledge that the child has and the intellectual consciousness. This method has other advantages as well.

After some time working with a communicative method one has to ask the child: What happens if you need to explain this in your class? What past do you need to explain a movie?

The ELE teachers course encourages the language transfer processes with our foreign students because we know now that we have to support them to learn a language that is not theirs. What if the teachers in primary schools would also utilize our strategies?
One needs to accept that life along with its multiple processes to perform linguistic transfer is a part of the journey whose destination is intuitive and intellectual learning. It is definitly difficult to learn a new language but with the linguistic structures it will be easier. Every language has its grammatical structures.

Communication is always universal otherwise there would probably not be any expression or language. In short as a ELE teacher I will now be able to use my knowledge to engcourage my students and to get them to learn.

As a speech therapist the ELE training has opened a door to a methodology and some teaching strategies that I had not thought about so far and will enrich my work for sure.

Montserrat Oliver Grau
• Diploma in Teaching - Specialty: preschool and primary education . Postgraduate in therapeutic pedagogy.
• Speech therapist.
• Spanish teacher for foreigners ( ELE training ).