Teaching Spanish to children; challenges and difficulties <

Teaching Spanish to children; challenges and difficulties

The method of teaching a foreign language varies depending on the age and motivation of the students. I want to take advantage of this opportunity you are offering me to talk about, based on my experience and on what I have learnt on the course, the mistakes that we can make as Spanish teachers when we work with children.

Having control over the class seems essential for a primary school teacher, to the point that many parents evaluate the teacher based on their control over their students or on how they behave in class. It shouldn’t be like this; students sitting in silence does not mean that they are learning. The first mistake is to prioritise discipline in an ELE class. An ELE class should be different to a science or mathematics class.
Whilst working with children it is necessary that there is a relaxed atmosphere that allows the students to relax and practise Spanish. It is for this reason that the charisma and people skills of the ELE teacher are fundamental to the success or failure in teaching Spanish.
To ensure that the students learn and practise Spanish the ELE teacher will have to, on many occasions, cede the lead roll to the students and this, due to their young age, will increase noise levels in class significantly. Excessive noise should not bother us whilst we carry out our objective: that the students learn Spanish.

As we saw during the course, the communicative method is the correct one when it comes to teaching Spanish. However, it is a mistake to not compliment this method with other methodologies studied. The physical response method is vital for working with children: songs, rhymes, and choreographies allow students to learn whilst they have fun. The traditional method will help us to improve their vocabulary through a bilingual vocabulary list that we can add a new word each day to. We can also turn to the audio lingual method by recreating dialogues, phrases, and creating roll play games (repetition is necessary when we work with children).

At these ages we should be careful when it comes to explaining theory (grammar). It is possible that they do not yet know what a substantive, adjective, or adverb is in their mother tongue. One must remember that we are teaching Spanish as a method of communication and for this reason we must always prioritise practice over theory. Our language’s grammar is varied and complex when we compare it to other and it may pose an insurmountable obstacle to some of our students. We must not forget that we work with children and for this reason some students may manage to understand grammar but will not be able to use it.

Lastly, I would like to mention the importance of rewarding mistakes when we teach a second language in a school. We must teach our students that making mistakes is part of learning. They should not be ashamed to make them. They must simply learn from them. A primary school student is used to doing well in most of their work. However, when the student practises Spanish it is inevitable that they make mistakes. Often it is convenient to ignore them to prioritise the flow of the conversation over correcting grammar. Other times it will be necessary to correct our students so that they can learn the correct form. Correcting a child in front of their classmates is never easy and for this reason we must reward the mistake and display it as something positive, as practise (and therefore the mistake) is the only way of learning the language. This is especially important in some cultures (in Asia) where mistakes are particularly punishable and are seen as a source of embarrassment, where a student will not use a phrase unless they are completely sure that it is correct.

In short, as a Spanish teacher we should adapt the class to the needs and abilities of our students by preparing a variety of activities for the students to enjoy and by complementing the communicative method with other age appropriate methodologies. We should also prioritise practise over theory and praise the efforts of those students who dare construct their own sentences in Spanish. Finally, as ELE teachers we must maintain a relaxed atmosphere and must be willing to give prominence to the students so they can practice, even at the cost of losing some control over the class, because only with practice will the students come to master Spanish.