TEACHING DIFFERENT LANGUAGES IN ESCOLA LA SALUT DE SABADELL

L’Escola la Salut is located in Sabadell midtown, in Gran Via. Sixty one teachers work in it and seven hundred and ninety students, of middle class, come everyday. Students from 3 years old, when they start in the pre-primary courses, to 18 years, when they have finished the high school.

We work English all these levels and not only in the English subject.

In the KINDERGARTEN, we work 1 hour and 45 minutes of English distributed in two sessions. We use the OXFORD SPLASH books and resources ( cds, ICT, books and four puppets: a turtle, a duck, a ladybug and a frog). Some activities that we do:

-          Routines: hello song, goodbye song weather song and days of the week song (only in P5).

-          Review the vocabulary worked with flash cards .

-          Play some game with the vocabulary: it can be a traditional game like memory or computer games.

-          Listen a story or watch a video of the unit worked.

-          Sing a song with the vocabulary.

-          Work with the book.

-          Conversation with a native person once a week. The children of P3 only say words, P4 say words and some expressions like  “It’s sunny today”, and P5 works words and expressions as “What’s the matter? I’ve got a runny nose”.

                        

Besides English itself, they also learn music with the L3 as vehicular tongue one hour a week. We work, with the help of some puppets,  the songs, the quality of the sound in this language, but the dances are in Catalan because they have to listen and learn some traditional songs of our country.

With the stuff that we work in the L3,  I introduce all the concepts in a very significant way to them:

- Every music lesson starts with the song, that I wrote, of one of the puppets that we use.

- T o work HIGH or LOW they associated the concepts with two animals.

- With the songs, we first see the video of the song and then I explain to them the verses of the song with pictures. Then they have to repeat each verse with me.

A the beginning of the course I write a song with the names of every class.

This is the song of  "The cats".

Also, they have one session of story time of the stories that they are working in Catalan and Spanish too.

In PRIMARY, besides the 2 hours of English established in the curriculum, the students of primary work the L3 :

. CICLE INICIAL: oral expression, 1 hour.

. CICLE MITJÀ: science, day to day English, 1 hour of each.

 .CICLE SUPERIOR: science, 1 hour.

They also use English as a vehicular language in arts and crafts.

In SECONDARY also they also work hard in their L3 learning process; they participate in THE BIG CHALLENGE contest to motivate students, the students elaborate a short sketch for JOCS FLORALS.

They are being prepared for Cambridge KET, PET and FCE.

They speak an hour per week with a native speaking assistant.

The students use English as a vehicular language in other subjects:

1st ESO: some units of maths.

2nd ESO: Treball de síntesi.

3rd ESO: Treball de síntesi and English clips in collaboration with CIUTAT i ESCOLA.

4th ESO: Anglo-German literature.

They can choose the German language as an optative language during the four years of ESO.

In BATXILLERAT, the students have to be able to express themselves in English, as well as writing as speaking; they also have to know and apply grammar rules.

One hour a week, they speak with the native speaking assistant. Finally, the best students can do official tests from Cambridge or EOI (B1 or B2).

As you can see, the school gives an important role to the English language it works. The children leave the school with a good level of this third language they started to learn at the age of three.

As an English teacher in the kindergarten for 4 years, I can tell you that maybe the children haven’t got the skills of their mates of primary, but it’s easy for them to learn a language if you teach it  in a significant way.

They are listening this language for almost 4 hours every week and since the second term of P3 until the last of P5 they can follow the classes. They are trilingual in some way, due to they understand 3 languages, they speak 2 with fluency and they can say some simple expressions with the L3.

In my opinion, our target with the L3, is to make them see that it’s useful to speak it and use it. Let’s start!

HOW LANGUAGES ARE LEARNED? : Widespread beliefs among parents, educators and students.

At school, everyday I have the chance to interact with the people involved in the children education: parents, teachers and, of course, the students themselves. Last week I asked some of them “how a language is learned?” and in the next lines you can read the answers given.

First, I ask to three STUDENTS. The first two were primary students and the third a secondary one.

The pupil of 4^th grade answered me “studying, thinking, singing and reading” and the 2^nd grade child gave me a simple, but correct one “I go to Kids & Us and I listen stories on a CD player”.

The 3^rd of ESO student said “studying it, practicing the grammar, the spelling, the speaking. You start with the basic stuff and then your level goes higher. The first years you learn vocabulary, then the rules. Also a good idea is to travel to UK to practise. Ahh! Playing games!”.

Then, I needed the opinion of three TEACHERS; two of them are not language learning specialists and one is a speech therapist.

Non specialists told me “using the language, speaking it” and  “ speaking it, listening it, with no grammar and watching TV series. My son has learned a lot seeing TV series and movies in original version”.

The speech therapist spoke a little bit more and summing up “ in the case of a second or third language , you learn it with the imitation. It’s easier learning languages during the first years or your life”.

 My last targets were the PARENTS of the students, concretely two mothers. One of them said “listening it. The listening part is very important .Studying grammar. A good way to learn grammar structures is reading in English”. The other applied “studying grammar and listening a lot of English”.

Reading the commentaries of the people I could find three myths of beliefs:

-          “Watching movies can improve your English”: the teacher told me and I think that it’s true. Watching movies, or other things, listening English songs ,etc  is a good training for your ears, but you have to complement that with a grammar study and speaking activities.

-          “It’s easier learning languages during the first years of your life”: again it has a part  of truth . Yes, the way in what the children learn a language is more natural the first years than when you are older, but also it’s true that they have less skills. With the help of a good teacher, though, they will have no problems in their language learning process.

-          “Studying a lot of grammar”:  Again a half truth. Of course they need some structures to know how to speak, and how to write, but I think that grammar exercises are overrated at schools. They can learned grammar structures reading easy texts, or with drama plays in the classroom.

-          “Is he speaking English ?:  Any of the people interviewed said this, but is also question that sometimes some parents ask me. They think that listening the L3 a few hours a week is going to make their children an English speaker. Then I have to explain them that this is a long term process and in the kindergarten is only the start.

MULTILINGUALISM IN A PRE-PRIMARY GROUP

In the school that I work the immigrant children are just a few and the L1 is Catalan. Although that, there are some groups that break the rule. One of them is a class of the kindergarten who has 2 immigrants, 2 daughters and 1 son of immigrants, and a boy who, despite he is Spanish, speaks English with his father. Besides that, the L1 most spoken is Spanish.

This group has 26 children; 5 have Catalan as mother tongue, 2 speak Nigerian and 19 have Spanish as L1.

The last ones started to speak Catalan when they were in P3 and despite now they speak both, they use Spanish when they are playing or they ask something to their classmates, but not to the teachers.

Of this group of 19, there are two special cases because they speak two languages at home. The first one, speaks Spanish with her father and Portuguese with her mother; the second one, uses Spanish with her mother and English with his father, although he is Spanish too.

The group of 5 were able to speak Spanish when they started school, but with a lack of fluency. Now they have improved a lot because they have to speak it while they are playing with their friends who have Spanish as L1.

The last group has two girls from Nigeria; both speak Nigerian and some English, because sometimes they use it at home. One of them are in Catalonia since she was 3 and she has no problem with Catalan and Spanish, but the other came  on April of last year and she is learning a mix of Spanish and Catalan, but she is enhancing a lot everyday.

As you can see is not a typical group in the school that I work because, as I said before, their mother tongue is not Catalan and there are 2 immigrants. 

The L3 in the school is English.  I’ve been working as English teacher since 2011 and in the kindergarten they have a natural way of learning languages. In my opinion, besides the reason said before, this group in particular has no problems in the language learning process because they are learning other languages at the same time since they were 3 or younger. 

“NO CHILD LEFT MONOLINGUAL” by KIM POTOVSKY.

The sixty per cent of the world’s populations are bilingual or multilingual, but in USA, with a lot of immigrants,  only the twenty per cent speaks another language which’s not English. With this idea starts Kim Potovsky. She affirms that “USA promotes the monolingualism”. How is that? In that country, they have some myths about learning new languages:

First, they think that MULTILINGUALISM damages SOCIETY: in their opinion, immigrants aren’t learning English and it’s quite the opposite because they are learning more English and faster than in the past. The seventy per cent of the immigrants speak it well or very well, and this is with no much help from the country.

The world’s is changing; USA was a country that received a lot of immigration from Mexico, now they are changing roles:  Mexico receives immigration from its big neighbour; the same happens in Italy, which is welcoming more immigrants too. For this change, USA population has to make up their minds, better said, open their minds and promote a bilingual country, as Potovsky says “English + Nation”.

Under their point of view, the MULTILINGUALISM damages INDIVIDUALS; this is the second myth sustained. They think that leaving your heritage language is going to accelerate your English learning, and again is the opposite: the more instruction you received in your heritage tongue the better you are going to do with English.

She talks about some educational programs, which go from ones who only use English to some that use English and other language in different levels:

-          English Only: they only speak in this language.

-          Bilingual: with 25% Spanish and 75% in English.

-          Two-way immersion (some learn English and some learn Spanish).

For her, the last one  is the perfect one because they learn both languages; the first years they speak ten per cent in English and the ninety per cent in Spanish, but as they are growing up, they use the fifty percent each language.

She also thinks that it’s a shame that in USA, they start learning a foreign language in high school at the age of fourteen. This idea leads to another one which is the thought of confusing children with more than one language when they are in the kindergarten. As she defends, that’s another myth, another mistake because she works in a project called SATURDAY SCHOOL, in which children learn the mother tongue of their family, and she is witness of how they can learn another language without a problem. She ends saying that we have to use also the media resources to achieve the ORGANIC BILINGUALISM that USA needs because learning languages is learning more cultures and there they have plenty of them.

Talking about Catalonia, we have two languages in the school (Catalan and Spanish) and, in general, we learn a third one which is English. To become a trilingual country we would need to use the third program mentioned by Potovsky “Two-immersion”, but we live in a bilingual country and I think that in some schools is enough to learn Catalan, because we have also a lot of immigration.  So, in my opinion, Potovsky’s program is good to apply in here if all the children would have the same level as in Spanish as in Catalan.

ABOUT “30 MINUTS” DOCUMENTARY: “Do you speak English?”

I remember that I started English classes in 5^th grade at school, my little sister started in 3^rd and, nowadays all the children start in 1^st of Primary or even before, in the kindergarten. These facts can make you see that English is everyday more important in the society that we live. It’s the lingua franca of the world.

Here, in Catalonia, one of each three jobs requires a good level of English. It’s a curious thing that we incorporated IT as the first foreign language in the schools thirty years ago and we have, in general, poor level. Spain is the third country in EU with the lowest level. What’s happening then? Why do we still have that level after three decades of learning?

In every learning process, there are two important actions: someone is learning and someone is teaching.

As in the documentary is said, there are a lot of teachers and schools that used and they are still using a method that’s not the best: grammar + grammar + grammar + pencil and book + poor oral sessions. We, as teachers, have to adopt better practices in the teaching process, making students talk and use the language as a tool of communication. One good example is the teacher that appears in the video, making classes fun; a teacher who records the pupils speaking English, and it works. Also, another teacher works this third language in science, and as she says “they are using English although they don’t understand it, they use a lot of deductions, what is an important thing in the learning process”. These are good practices.

The students are the other part of the learning process. As I said before, they start learning English younger everyday. Some studies says that during the pre-primary years they have less skills to learn than in primary, but their learning is more natural. In my opinion, we have to take advantage of that natural thing that they have, and with good practices their level can improve a lot. Besides that, we have to make them see that this language that they are starting to use is useful in the society. We can see movies and cartoons in English, listening songs, etc. Being exposed to English in the mass media is equal to twenty years of formal study of English.

In conclusion, we can enhance our level of English adopting better ways in teaching and in that way, making the learning process better too, and showing the students that English is not only in the books, that it is surrounding us, that it is a language and we have to use it to make it alive