The English Revolution!

Ana Fernández Viciana and Mercedes Pérez Agustín tell us about a many-pronged new English objective in their school, Sagrado Corazón in Madrid, spanning from Infants to Bachillerato.

   
Ever since the gradual establishment of English as the lingua franca in the world of business, technology and diplomacy in the latter half of last century, schools have been forced to meet the growing importance of English language learning. This is very apparent in Spain with the numerous bilingual private and state schools that have come into being. Last year at Sagrado Corazón in Madrid we decided to reassess our approach to English teaching to see how we could really maximize the potential for learning English. 

Initiatives at Infant and Primary levels

                                
The conclusions we came to were the following. Firstly, we needed to begin teaching English at pre-school level. We immediately took on two teachers and set up a Pre-school course consisting of daily fifteen-minute classes for three year olds and an hour a day for five and six year olds, teaching through rhymes, songs and stories. The teachers developed their own curriculum based on the Spanish one.  Secondly, at Primary level, we increased the English timetable by two hours a week to a total of five hours for each year group. 

CLIL programme

                    
In addition, we implemented a CLIL programme; English was previously the only subject to be taught in a different language to the pupils’ mother tongue, whereas now we teach science through English too for a further two hours a week at Primary level and contemporary science and ethics at Secondary. This has had a notable impact on our pupils’ ability to understand and produce language. The project is now into its second year and is progressing well. The English teachers worked together with the subject teachers to plan the syllabus which, in the case of Science, includes experiments, presentations and projects on chosen topics. Particular emphasis is given to oral skills to get pupils familiar with speaking in public. Parents were a little concerned initially as to how this would work out but now that they’ve witnessed the progress their children have made, they are very supportive. We broke the children in gently, paraphrasing and translating a lot for Primary and lower ESO levels, although with upper ESO and Bachillerato we were able to begin in English from day one. 

Initiatives at Secondary level

                      
We made some quite radical changes at Secondary level too. We decided that it would be more constructive to place students into groups according to their level of English rather than their age.  The result has been a lesser degree of disparity in terms of language levels which has allowed students to move together at a similar pace.  The two new subjects, contemporary science and ethics, add a further three hours of exposure to English to the weekly timetable. For both subjects, teachers provided students with a pack of materials taken from various sources. This material, together with the guided Internet research tasks we set, forms the basis of the class debates where we encourage students to use as much English as they can. As is the case in the Primary school, the students’ language level has greatly improved thanks to being exposed to vocabulary related to a variety of topics rather just those which arise in a traditional language course. 

Language assistants

                            
A third innovation at this level has been the introduction of the two language assistants who were hired to provide conversation classes of an hour a week to each group. These classes are very popular with students because groups are smaller, (they are divided into two, with the other half of the class working with readers with the English teacher) the atmosphere is more relaxed and they find this is a novel and more appealing way of learning a language.

Creating a language school

                      
With these changes in place, we decided to give our students something extra to aim for by offering them the chance to sit some recognized English exams and thus obtain an official certificate in a foreign language before entering university. It will also help them get used to exams in which they are tested by an external and independent organization. So, we’re currently setting up our own English School outside of the curriculum and school timetable. Thanks to the help of the Cambridge ESOL Examinations Centre in Avila, who offered to level test all our pupils from Primary to Bachillerato, we’re able to offer courses to all pupils from 3rd Year Primary upwards, according to the results of their test.  The courses will consist of three hours a week throughout the school year (from October to May) with the aim of preparing pupils for all Cambridge exams from Starters, Movers and Flyers through to KET, PET and FCE. 

Other activities

                           
To complement the extra formal classes we decided to organize a cultural agenda. For example, we took our 3rd and 4th ESO students on an excursion to downtown Madrid where an English guide told them all about the city’s Golden Age and the main writers who lived in the city at that time.  Other groups went to the theatre or the cinema. We even invited a guest speaker from Texas to chat to students about his country and customs. 

Our original intention was to improve our pupils’ general level of English. At Primary level, pupils who choose to attend the English school will be receiving a maximum total of eight hours of English input a week, and at Secondary, a staggering eleven hours. All in all, what began as a small step forward has little by little become quite a demanding and challenging project. We face it with enthusiasm and a willingness to learn from it and become better professionals.

Ana Fernández Viciana and Mercedes Pérez Agustín teach at Sagrado Corazón in Madrid.