From Intuition to Structure: What the ELE Course Has Brought to My Teaching Practice<

From Intuition to Structure: What the ELE Course Has Brought to My Teaching Practice

I am a Hispanic philologist and have been dedicated to teaching for many years. I have taught Language and Literature, prepared students for different examinations, and have also had the opportunity, on a few occasions, to teach Spanish to foreign students.

During those early experiences as a teacher of Spanish as a foreign language, I discovered something that probably happens to many teachers: I knew what I wanted to teach and had the resources to explain the language, answer questions, and correct mistakes, but I often made decisions intuitively. My training as a philologist and my teaching experience provided me with a solid foundation, but I felt that I lacked specific tools to teach Spanish as a foreign language in a more conscious, structured, and systematic way.

That is why I decided to take the ELE Course offered by the Hemingway Institute.

Of all the topics covered, two aspects have been particularly important to me: teaching methodologies and assessment.

Learning about different methodological approaches has allowed me to understand that even behind an apparently simple activity lies a series of decisions: what we want the student to learn, what role interaction plays, how grammar and communication are connected, or what type of activity is most appropriate for achieving a particular objective.

Furthermore, the module devoted to assessment has helped me reflect on something fundamental: it is not enough to have the impression that a student “is doing well” or “has improved.” It is necessary to know what we want to assess and to identify appropriate tools to determine whether this has actually been achieved.

One of the main lessons I take away from this course is precisely this shift from intuition to didactic reflection. Intuition remains important in the classroom. Every student is different, and no course can become a rigid sequence of activities established in advance. However, I now feel that I can make many of these decisions on a much more solid basis. I can plan a lesson with greater clarity, establish objectives, select activities, and assess whether those objectives have actually been achieved.

For me, the course has also meant returning to a path that had been put on hold for some time. Teaching Spanish as a foreign language is a field that connects very naturally with my background as a philologist and with something that has always been present throughout my professional career: an interest in language, communication, and people.

I complete this training with the feeling that I have added a missing piece to my professional profile. My philological training allows me to have an in-depth knowledge of the language; my teaching experience has taught me how to work in the classroom and adapt to students’ needs; and this course has provided me with specific tools to bring all of this together in the context of teaching Spanish as a foreign language.

Now the challenge is to continue learning, put these tools into practice, and keep building my own path as a Spanish teacher.

Because, ultimately, teaching a language is not simply about explaining how it works. It is also about helping another person find the words they need to understand a new world and find their way in it.