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