A group of West Country primary school teachers has been 'fast-tracked' to enable them to deliver some Spanish to their pupils. Led by the
University of the West of England and supported by the
Education Department of the Spanish Embassy, the project was cited as an example of good practice in the Languages Strategy document for England,
Languages for All: Languages for Life (p.20).
Building on experience gained during a European Year of Languages project, ¡Olé! Spanish in the Primary Classroom focused specifically on the needs of primary schools and involved training teachers in ab-initio Spanish, as well as language-teaching methodology. Learning materials produced by the team were used over a twelve-week course, partly for classroom-based teaching (36 hours) and partly for self-study (approximately 24 hours). The teachers reached a level of grammatical competence equivalent to GCSE – helped, no doubt, by an innovative approach to learning the reflexive passive: Spanish recipes were used, the food cooked and the whole process described (in Spanish) whilst eating the results!
Participants were unanimous in their praise for the course and are keen to put their new skills into practice after the summer break. A trip to Madrid to visit the schools with whom links have been forged has been planned for February 2004.
See also
Laying the foundations: Primary Spanish in Nottingham, Nottingham Trent University, and
Models, Methodologies and Materials: Portals for Foreign Languages in the Primary School, University of Nottingham.
