Introduction of the LOMLOE

Like all new education acts in Spain, the LOMLOE has attracted controversy and led to protests and accusations that it is undermining the education system. Although various parts of the LOMLOE have already been introduced, the new curriculum will be implemented from the 2022/23 school year. But what are the most important changes in the LOMLOE, and what does it mean for bilingual education?

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Bilingual education in Aragón

This post looks at the bilingual programme in Aragón. It forms part of our series on bilingual programmes in different regions of Spain. In May 2018, Aragón introduced a new framework for bilingual education in schools called the Modelo BRIT-Aragón, which replaced the earlier PIBLEA programme.

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Workshop at CIEB 2019

In a previous blog post, Benedict Barclay spoke about the talk he’ll be giving at the CIEB bilingual conference in Granada. This post is about the workshop that he’ll be doing at 6 pm on Friday 18 October. The title of the workshop is From lost in translation to cultural cross-pollination. Or how to successfully translate the untranslatable.

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Bilingual education in Extremadura

This week, we continue our series of posts on bilingual programmes in different regions of Spain by looking at Extremadura. Bilingual education in Extremadura is governed by legislation published in 2017. As of 2019/20, bilingual schools make up just over half of all secondary schools and about a third of primary schools.

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Talk at CIEB 2019

We’ll be participating at this year’s CIEB bilingual conference, which will be held in Granada from 18-20 October. This year Benedict Barclay will be giving a short talk (comunicación) and a workshop (taller) on behalf of LinguaFrame. Below, he gives a brief summary of the talk that he’ll be giving at 7pm on Saturday 19 October.

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Bilingual education in Andalusia report

A recent report on bilingual education in Andalusia concludes that bilingual programmes improve students’ English skills and Spanish writing skills, without any detrimental impact on their performance in the non-language subjects taught in English. In addition, these programmes tend to reduce differences between pupils from different socioeconomic backgrounds.

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I’m dreaming of a white Christmas…

It’s that time of year again: Christmas parties, shopping for presents, spending time with your family and eating too much food. For most people, it’s a time to have fun and enjoy yourself. For others, it’s above all an important religious festival. And for yet others, it’s all overrated: “Bah! Humbug!” as Scrooge famously says in Dickens’ A Christmas Carol. Unsurprisingly, most English idioms that refer to Christmas assume it’s a happy time of year.

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Crimes against language: who decides what’s right and wrong?

For most crimes, the government decides what we are – and particularly are not – allowed to do. With crimes against language, the situation is a bit different. To begin with, you won’t normally be fined or put in jail for breaking the rules of grammar. However, that doesn’t mean that there aren’t any rules – or does it? The answer is, it depends.

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How to build your vocabulary: part 1

When learning a language, it’s obviously important to learn grammar and to practice speaking and listening. But without vocabulary, you won’t get anywhere. To be able to communicate effectively and understand what people are saying, you need to know lots of words. For many people, this is the single biggest challenge. In this first post about building vocabulary we’ll look at two of the possible approaches: vocabulary lists and spaced repetition.

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How to say Hello

When learning a new language, one of the first things you learn is how to greet people. With English, you’ll be taught “Hello”, “Hi”, “Good morning”, “Good afternoon”, “Good evening” and perhaps “How do you do?” However, when you meet native English speakers, or watch English television programmes, you quickly realise that there are lots of other ways to say hello.

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Diversity of bilingual programmes

One problem when discussing bilingual programmes is that most people – whether parents, teachers, politicians or journalists – tend to assume that bilingual schools in the different parts of Spain are very similar to one another. In this post we’ll present some of the key differences between the bilingual programmes at secondary school level.

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Inspirational teachers

One of the most inspiring things at the recent conference in Badajoz was having a chance to see all of the great work being done by teachers to make bilingual education successful at their schools. The rules on bilingual programmes vary greatly from region to region, as do the backgrounds of students from school to school, so there is no single “correct” way to provide a bilingual education. Fortunately, dedicated teachers are testing different approaches to find out what works for them, in their schools and with their students, while also meeting the legal requirements of the programmes in their parts of Spain.

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Are “bilingual” schools in Spain really bilingual?

Critics often say that bilingual schools in Spain aren’t really bilingual, because students don’t become fully bilingual. By bilingual, they mean able to speak two languages “perfectly” – in terms of grammar, vocabulary and accent. But even people with an exceptionally good grasp of the language will never quite reach the level of a native person with a similar educational background. So if it is unrealistic for Spanish students to become bilingual in this sense, why are Spanish schools called “bilingual”.

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How do Europeans learn languages?

A couple of weeks ago we posted about which languages Europeans speak, based on the results of a 2012 Eurobarometer survey. The survey also gives lots of interesting information about how Europeans learn languages. Although many people’s only experience of language learning is through lessons at school, there are lots of other ways to improve your language skills.

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Who are we?

LinguaFrame was founded by Benedict Barclay and Rebecca Jégou in 2011, with the specific goal of publishing textbooks in English for bilingual schools in Spain. We embarked on this journey after speaking to teachers at bilingual schools who were enthusiastic about the concept of bilingual education, but who were unhappy with their current textbooks in English for non-language subjects such as geography, science and maths.

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Welcome!

Welcome to the LinguaFrame blog. We’ve now been publishing textbooks for bilingual schools* and English language learning materials for 7 years, and here we’ll be blogging about some of the things that we’ve learned during that period. We’ll also post about some of the curiosities of the English language, strategies for language learning, the differences between English and Spanish, and bilingualism in general. Many of our posts will be available in English and Spanish. Comments are welcome, in English or Spanish. If you’re a teacher and you would like to contribute a guest post, please…

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