Plurilingualism Teaching

Which is the best linguistic program in Valencia?

At the past post we talked about the society’s change and plurilingualism's importance growth. According to this change, the educational model to teach languages needs to change too in order to build a plurilingual competence, based on the metacognitive skills that different languages learning share and made easy to learn a new one, because they are connected to each other in our mind.

In my opinion, the best model to teach languages, and more here in Valencia where we have two official languages, is the one which try to give the same importance to every language and which aim is that all languages should be:

1. Studied as a Subject.
2. Used as working language to teach the others subjects, that is the basis of the Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL).

Next presentation show the different Programs that we can apply in our schools and its features:

Linguistic Normalization Plan from garfam

From my point of view, the Linguistic Immersion Program is the best one to apply at schools because its target is that students achieve mastery on both official languages, and could introduce English and other languages as working languages too to teach in a CLIL way.

...What do you think about?

Language and Culture Integration

How to work it at school

There’s no doubt about that we live in a globalized world where the movement of people is increasing every day, and as a result, we can find at our classes students from different nationalities and cultures which requires an extra effort to communicate.

Due to this cultural change and the increasing social demand it’s necessary to promote, from school, the learning of foreign languages to build a solid basis of multilingualism.

In this context, we have to remember that we should also teach about the ethnic equality and the importance of cultural diversity, because cultural pluralism give the students the opportunity to grow as person and be open-minded in their future if they learn to have a wider view of the world.

Next video (Minute 32:55) is related with we are talking about, and shows how a program at a school’s library achieves to improve the language and cultural integration at the same time. This program is based on student volunteers that help the foreign students, and their families too, to do their homework, and, in the other hand, foreign families teach about their language and cultural habits.

I think that’s a good way to work through the respect and interest to other languages and cultures. 

The dreamed teacher

First thing everyone who want to become a teacher have to do is think about what kind of teacher want to be.

I guess that it help come back to our past and think about which teachers we will always remember and why…

Most of the teachers who have influenced me in a good way share a main characteristic, they are empathic people who can understand your point of view, what you are interested in, your worries… and try to help you with your personal growth, not only with your intellectual growth. About their lessons, I remember that were dynamic and related with present and real live.

Moreover, I used to like teachers who talk about our future and give us lot of information about what can we study, in which university, which time we had to make applications…

I think all of them were teachers with a huge interpersonal intelligence, and that it doesn’t mean that they were soft… They were very patient, however, they were serious too with what they had to teach and knew how to maintain the order at class.