In this post I will try to portray how
languages are taught in the school “Sagrada Família” in the district of Sant
Andreu de Palomar, a school that goes prom pre-school to the A levels also
known as “bachillerato”.
Pre-school
At pre-primary level, when kids are between 3 and
5 years old, the lessons are mainly developed in Catalan but the use of the
English language is already introduced.
Some trips and events are held both in Catalan
and Spanish and the school also dedicates one morning of each school year to
present a theatre play in English for the kids: “Georgina and the dragon”.
Primary school
First of all, let’s see the presence of Catalan
and Spanish, which slightly fluctuates depending on the academic year.
Year of primary school
|
Catalan
|
Spanish
|
1st year
|
5 hours a week
|
2 hours a week
|
2nd year
|
4 hours a week
|
3 hours a week
|
3rd year
|
2 hours a week
|
4 hours a week
|
4th year
|
3 hours a week
|
3 hours a week
|
5th year
|
4 hours a week
|
2 hours a week
|
6th year
|
4 hours a week
|
3 hours a week
|
As we can observe on the table, the combination
of both official languages teaching sums up a total of 6 or 7 hours a week,
depending on the year. In terms of foreign languages, only English is taught
during this academic period.
During the 1st and 2nd
year of primary school, students have English lessons for 2 hours a week. The
last 4 years of this academic period, they receive 3 hours a week of English,
which means that when it comes to teaching English language as a subject the
total of hours this language is taught is very much the same to Catalan and
Spanish languages, although it is yet not enough.
Students receive constant input in Spanish and
Catalan, not only at school but also at home and in the street whilst the input
they receive of English is quite reduced. For this reason, the “Sagrada
Família” school introduces CLIL (Content and Language Integrated Learning) and
starts teaching non-linguistic subjects in English.
Pupils start studying Visual Arts in English during
the two initial years of primary school, leading to an average of 4 hours of
English a week, and afterwards the same is done with Sciences, reaching a total
of 7 hours a week.
Moreover, at this stage the centre also
celebrates Halloween (bringing kids closer to a different culture) and it keeps
providing them with theatre plays as well as with workshops in English.
Secondary school
When kids reach secondary school, English keeps
on being the most important foreign language and it is taught for 3 hours a
week, the exact same time as Catalan and Spanish.
Nevertheless, at the very beginning of
secondary school, German is introduced as a compulsory subject for 2 hours a
week. During the whole phase of secondary education, students also watch a film
in English and another one in German every year.
Later on, at the 3rd year of secondary
school, the centre also introduces French, but this time as an optional
subject. It is also the one and only time students can watch a film in French
during the whole secondary school period.
We can clearly observe that the handling of
foreign languages teaching focus its interest in the English language and, in
terms of CLIL, the school still offers a couple subjects in English: Physical
Education and statistics workshop.
Last but not least, the “Sagrada Familia” school
puts forward a quite fascinating activity that goes from secondary school to
the A levels: the linguistic voluntary
service. Through this voluntary work, students from secondary school and
the A levels can help primary school students with their English or they can do
the same with Catalan to assist immigrant students with their oral expression.
A levels (“bachillerato”)
The A levels is the final stage in the
educative system before accessing the university.
During these 2 years of high school, German and
French remain present in the curriculum along with Catalan, Spanish and
English.
This is the time the school dedicates to
languages teaching every week, showing a slightly bigger presence of the
English language in comparison to the rest:
1st year
|
2nd year
|
|
Catalan language and literature
|
2 h
|
2 h
|
Spanish language and literature
|
2 h
|
2 h
|
English language
|
3 h
|
3 h
|
German language
|
2 h
|
2 h
|
French language
|
2 h
|
2 h
|
The same way it was done during secondary
school, every year students watch a film in each of the foreign languages: 1 in
English, 1 in French and 1 in German. Besides, different workshops are held,
although they tend to be in English as the following chart illustrates:
1st year
|
2nd year
|
|
Religion in English workshop
|
-
|
1 h
|
“e PROJECT” workshop
|
1 h
|
-
|
“official oral exams preparation” workshop
|
-
|
1 h
|
French workshop
|
1 h
|
1 h
|
German workshop
|
1 h
|
1 h
|
Besides the linguistic voluntary service previously mentioned, 2 trips are organized the last year of the A levels:
- For the scientific-technological modality: a trip to Switzerland
- For the social and humanistic modality: a trip to Rome
Escola d’Idiomes Sagrada Família
The school also offers a programme designed to
provide students with 2 additional hours of English or German every week.
Kids can start these extra-curricular classes
at the beginning of primary education, with the exception of English lessons, which
can start during the last year of pre-school (P5).
The main goal of these classes, at least the
English ones, is to develop the listening and oral abilities of the students.
They don’t seek to introduce new grammatical concepts but to promote
communicative skills through different projects and tasks.
This programme also offer English conversation
classes for adults with a mid-level of the language.
Conclusion
It seems that we can definitely state that plurilingualism
is not properly handled at schools since only a couple foreign languages are taught
throughout the whole academic system, completely ignoring the promotion of
tolerance towards linguistic differences and the appreciation of languages that
multilingualism tries to develop.
In most of the schools in Cataluña, the
languages and the cultures of the immigrant students are usually ignored and
the main goal is to promote the languages of the territory as well as English
due to its globalised significance, which can lead to learning difficulties given
the fact that immigrant students may don’t understand the contents properly as
they are taught in a dominant language which is not their mother tongue.
Besides, the English language is typically taught
from a monoglossic point of view, as a separate monolingual system based on
grammatical aspects, which proves that languages are not interrelated at
schools when it comes to their instruction. There is just a small exception that
shows some sort of heteroglossic bilingual education where a couple of subjects incorporate
the language as a means of communication to teach its contents following the immersion
principles of CLIL.
I believe it is of great importance to get
closer to the different languages and cultures that can be found within a
school’s walls in order to promote understanding and diversity amongst society.
For this reason, following the example of the linguistic voluntary service, maybe some activities
could be arranged to get closer to the immigrants’ cultures and open the
children’s minds to other realities.
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