Spanish as a foreign language teacher: the memory of the course<

Spanish as a foreign language teacher: the memory of the course

For a person without any experience as a language teacher, producing a report, as is needed for this course, raises a lot of questions. The first thing to worry about is establishing which students should be put in which class. For an inexperienced teacher, it could be simpler giving the first classes to a more advanced class as it would be easier to communicate with them. However, the needs of absolute beginners are easier to figure out, above all, if the students need to use Spanish from the very beginning in order to get about socially.

To come up with the contents for the chapters and the sessions, it was necessary to consult several guidebooks. Each one uses their own methodology, which is why they decided to follow the common guidelines to develop the program while using clear criteria: adapt the material to the needs and characteristics of the students, rather than the other way round. When aiming the course at students without any previous knowledge of Spanish who have moved to Spain, it was decided to spend the first few classes covering the basics such as greetings, introducing and giving information about oneself. From there, new elements were added such as describing objects and people, asking for directions or expressing likes and interests. Priority was given to the practical contents while trying to weave in grammar, vocabulary, phonetics and cultural topics.

The objective of the classes was to combine what the student needed to learn to get by independently and what they need to learn to begin studying Spanish. However, capturing this idea in the concrete chapters and lessons implied many changes of approach to be able to impart the materials effectively with interesting exercises. When designing classes, you can keep in mind that, as much as possible, the material learnt in one class cans serve as the base for new material in the following classes.

To conclude it can be confirmed that this report is necessary to finish the theory part of the course and also as a step towards becoming a Spanish-as-a-foreign-language teacher. The final result can be considered to be very positive, although, this program needs to be applied in real life with actual students in order to check its validity.