My experience as a teacher of Spanish as foreign language in Bilbao. Courses for teachers of Spanish.

During my placement with Instituto Hemingway, my job consisted of giving Spanish classes to foreigners with an advanced level of Spanish between B1 and B2. As such, I also took charge of everything associated with this aforementioned job: preparing classes, adding the content of planned lessons for the week to the school’s Intranet, evaluating students. Furthermore, every Friday all teachers met with the school’s director to exchange ideas and impressions, organise the classes and levels for the following week according to the tests carried out by the students, and assign a teacher to each class…

The students´ profiles varied hugely, both in terms of their nationality as well as their ability in the foreign language, which presents a challenge for a teacher. Every day I had to prepare activities that were adjusted to the general needs of each student, as well as catering for the improvement of grammatical weaknesses at the same time. In my experience as a teacher, I have observed students´ reactions and confronted their doubts in confidence after having studied this new way of teaching contained in the manual, in comparison to other materials I had read in the past.

Thanks to the freedom that I have had as a teacher here, since day one I have focused on applying a communicative methodology to my classes. This means student-focused learning, whereby the student is the protagonist of his or her teaching and can intervene at any moment. For this reason, in all the activities exhibited, all students communicate between themselves and with their teacher: expressing doubts, correcting errors and explaining their worries and frustrations associated with the learning and acquisition of Spanish as foreign language.

As has previously been mentioned, the centre has trusted me and my capabilities as a teacher since the first moment but has also always offered me guidelines to follow, drawn from the experience of my superiors, which was especially useful during my first few days here. Likewise, I have always felt a certain curiosity for how my colleagues worked and how they solved problems or doubts that arose in their classes. Thanks to them I have felt like I now belong in the centre, which has given me additional confidence in developing my skills as a teacher of Spanish as a foreign language.

I also would like to emphasise the great working environment within Instituto Hemingway, which has also meant that my first real experience as a teacher has been excellent as well as professionally enriching. I invite future students to carry out their placement in Instituto Hemingway. They will have the freedom to experiment and develop their professional process in the field, always under the guidance of others.