REFLECTION ON "30 MINUTS": English language in Catalan society and education

VIDEO: Do you speak English?

Nowadays, we live in a globalized world and English has become a lingua franca, a common language amongst the different countries to allow communication.

After the Second World War, American companies started to grow and flourish and English became the language used for commercial purposes.

With tourism increase and international businesses, English has been found essential for companies to communicate with their clients. However, even though English has been taught at schools for more than 3 decades, employers still find it very difficult to find personnel with a good English level.

According to a research carried out by the European Union, only 25% of the teenager population between 14 and 16 years old are able to use English correctly in comparison to Sweden, where more than the 80% of the students proved to have great competences in the language. What is the explanation for this low level of competences in English?

I believe that the main explanation lays in the educational system.

English lessons follow the traditional method based on grammar, but this method doesn’t promote comprehension and expression in English. It doesn’t focus on actual communication, and the only way of learning a language is by using it.

My experience teaching English as a foreign language has shown me that language immersion plays a decisive role, especially at young ages. Contact with English promotes a better comprehension of the language and makes its use easier for the speakers. It allows learning in a more natural way because, in the end, at young ages it’s easier to make connections in the brain.

Unfortunately, in Cataluña, this contact with the English language is very low. English teachers speak Spanish in class, which means that students are not exposed to this foreign language appropriately. Also, the movies are dubbed instead of subtitled, which reduces drastically the population’s exposure to the English language.

We should make an effort to get more in touch with the English language at every stage, starting with the education sphere by focusing less on grammar and more in meaningful contents or by supporting the initiative of teaching subjects like Maths or Science through English, because only by perceiving a language and by using it we can actually learn it appropriately.