REFLECTION ON 30 MINUTES “DO YOU SPEAK ENGLISH?”
The role of English language in Catalan society has change during the last decades. The fact that at most of the jobs the knowledge of English is required and that the English language is becoming a Lingua Franca in the world make the society charge the batteries of the learning English.
Traditionally the second language learning at the Catalan schools used to be French but it had been changed to English. Also the way of teaching has changed from a grammar focused method to communicative methodologies. But even though seems not to be enough.
I notice it when I’m thinking on how did I learn English and I compare it with how do I teach it to my students. I remember doing English lessons full of writing, copying, rephrasing, repeating, and not very useful or grateful. But nowadays I try to teach it using different methodologies such as communicative approach, learning by doing, projects, and of course using a lot the oral skills. I also try to use the new technologies in class to motivate the students.
If we compare the results of the English level between Swedish and Catalan students there is still a big distance. It might be because of the number of students per class, for the amount of hours of the exposure with the language, for the methodologies used, for the lack of teacher training, or for the age of the students at the time of starting to learn the language…
Sometimes the demands from the society or parents are not the same as the ones that teachers think. For example, nowadays parents try to make their children attend to English classes as early as possible at least once a week. And the schools are trying to start teaching English at pre-primary levels. But I think that with those few hours of English it’s not enough. I think they should be more aware about the methodologies used, the time of exposure with the language and the chances to send them abroad to learn English instead of making pressure to make them to learn it as earlier as possible.
I think that we are working in a good way (people are getting more conscious about the importance of learning a second language and the teaching methodologies are going on a right direction) but there is still lot to do about it (for example, that nowadays learning English is still too expensive for most of the Catalan people and the Catalan Government doesn’t give enough resources to help students to improve their learning).