Teaching English in a Secondary School !

Both appeared this summer in the Catalan edition of EL PAIS newspaper:

“La selectividad tendrá prueba oral de inglés en 2012”

M. RUIZ DEL ÁRBOL – Madrid – 10/07/2008

“The students who are at 3rd of ESO will be the first to have to pass an oral exam of English or any other foreing lamguage when the have the seletivity Exam in the school year 2011/2012” declared Eva Almunia, the Secretary of State for Education, when she presneted the Real Decreto Project which changes the Seletivity exams.Almunia states this reform will cause a deep chage in the methodology on this language teaching…

“El inglés no arranca en la escuela”

FERRAN BALSELLS – Barcelona – 24/07/2008

This is a summary:

Less than a half of the Catalán students have a basic knowledge of English when they finish their secondary school. This level does not fulfill our domestic labour market.

A study carried by The Catalan Education Board with 4th of ESO students in 2006 concluded that only 40% of the students passed the oral basic level exams established by the EOI.

This level mentioned before wouldn’t be enough, according to EOI, to achieve a job where English was required. It only enables a person to ask for a drink in a pub in London but he/she would have some difficulty to ask for the change… and all this at a very slow pace.

The article finishes with the Catalan Conseller d’educació, Ernest Maragall, who explains that we will have to wait some years, not until 2015, to see the results of  their  project  aiming to stimulate the foreign languages learning started by the Education Board in 2007.

But teachers claim they are tired of the government’s promises, they feel the same as they were in the nineties with big  multi level groups inside a same class and  despite of the  omnipresence of the ICT’s  and globalization only a few students achieve a good level of English, most of them only achieve a good one by taking private lessons outside school.

After this term (1st 2008/9) my teacher mates and I are quite optimistic.

It seems we are  improving the quality of our teaching for several reasons:

1st we have achieved great support from our School Headmaster and its staff, as they have improved our teaching conditions a lot.

–           A foreign languages classroom with 10 computers, a Hi-fi audio system, TV, DVD and video players and a projector  “Canó”

–          Four hours teaching in all ESO classes and 1st of Batxillerat, two of them with half of the class ( desdoblament=hores B)

2nd we are still working on European projects …………….

3rd The  number of teachers and students using computers to  teach, learn  and practice English has very much increased:  Treasure Hunts, Blogs, Podcasts etc.. are used commonly in class.