AN INVESTIGATION ON THE LEARNING OF FOREIGN LANGUAGE IN SCHOOLS IN CATALONIA/SPAIN AND BC/CANADA: The Art of Teaching Foreign Languages
I have always been interested in languages, sports and education. Taking the liberal studies program gave me the opportunity to make meaningful connections between my areas of interest.
For the last 3 years I had the opportunity of travelling to Spain and working as an ESL instructor in an elementary school in Catalonia. Considering my experiences in teaching and my natural inclination towards languages and pedagogy, I decided to begin writing about the similarities and differences between educational systems in Spain and Canada. My graduation project will explore and compare the Spanish and Canadian education systems while focusing on bilingualism and physical education.
After I completed my first tutorial exploring the Spanish educational system from the perspective of an ESL instructor in an elementary school in Catalonia, for my second tutorial I decided to complete a deeper analysis of comparative aspects of methodological strategies, curricula and lesson plans of teaching languages in Spain and Canada.
Additionally, my tutorial outlines the perceptions of foreign language teachers and the multimodal and inspirational teaching of languages. The tutorial also summarizes the differences of pedagogical approaches of teaching English/French in Spain and Canada and the particularities of teaching languages as experienced at the school level.
One of the unanticipated learning outcomes of this tutorial was the overlap between the attention teachers allocated to multimodal and inspirational learning strategies in Spanish and Canadian elementary schools.
The research methods I used for this tutorial were: literature review, direct observation, and interviews with language teachers at Llor and Lord Roberts Elementary School. Through literature review and discussions with teachers, I got a better understanding of the pedagogical perspective and methodologies of teaching foreign languages in two different educational systems.
This tutorial preambles the upcoming tutorial in which I will explore the role and inclusion of physical education in school curricula and its connections with learning a foreign language. The present and forthcoming tutorial will help me shape the comparison of the Spanish and Canadian education system, with a focus on foreign languages and physical education.
I am thankful to my advisor, Annabella Cant for her guidance, and her enthusiastic support through the course of shaping this tutorial. Her knowledge and creative pedagogical ideas have been the source of inspiration for me throughout this tutorial.