Last October we attended the CIEB bilingual conference in Badajoz, which was a very valuable learning experience for us. This year, the conference is being held in our home town of Granada, so naturally we’ll be going. However, this time we’re not just going to listen and learn – we’ll also be giving a short talk and a workshop to share some of our expertise.
After running a bilingual programme for ten years, the region of Castile and Leon is making significant changes to its model of bilingual education. Change is never popular with everyone, and this case is no exception. But what are the main controversies?
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.
Most people enjoy watching TV and films, so it’s a very attractive way to learn a language if it works. Many people believe it does: the fact that most programmes in Spain are dubbed is often given as a reason why the Spanish don’t learn better English.
English spelling and pronunciation are famously difficult. Whoever established the official spelling of English words was either drunk, mad or both. One of the consequences of this is that there are lots of homophones – words with completely different meanings and spellings that sound exactly the same.
In our last post about building vocabulary, we talked about flashcards and spaced repetition. This time we’ll look at reading. It may be one of the most obvious ways to expand your vocabulary, but it’s also one of the best.
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.
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.
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.
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.