Dosier - Tema 6 - 18/12/17

In this session we dealt with the Edulingue program in Galicia and CLIL.  First, some definitions: the difference between secciones bilingües and centros plurilingües. Secciones bilingües refer to the organisation of one non-lingustic area or subject that is taught through one of the offical languages and at least 50% of the time in a foreign language.  Centros plurilingües are whole schools where a maximum of one third of all subjects are taught through a foreign language.

We then looked at the proposals from the Xunta de Galicia, the Edulingue 2020 program.  First we read it, then compared in pairs, in small groups and finally commented as a class.  While I think it is a laudable and commendable proposal I think they have been overly ambitious in the timing.  To expect that all of this can be achieved in just two years is simply impossible.  It would be better to call it Edulingue 2030 to at least give schools and administrations time to do it properly rather than scrambling to get it done.  I was struck by the inclusion of Chinese and Russian and my first thought was, to use the Spanish expression, empezando la casa por el tejado.  However, I suppose there’s no harm in including it and it’s not included as one of the solid objectives of the program.  One big problem is the idea that one third of teachers will reach C1 level by that time.  There are several problems here; first unless you already have a decent level of English it’s very difficult to reach C1 quickly without visiting the country or dedicating many hours to studying it.  Teachers already have quite enough on their plates and it seems unfair to ask, say a biology teacher, who has no expertise in languages to suddenly dedicate their time to learning it in their own time.  Another problem is that of certification, we were shown a petition against the administration outsourcing the exams to private companies like Trinity or the British Council Aptis test.  The EOIs already have their own robust systems of certification but as the Trinity oral exam can be completed in a mere 30 minutes, many schools were sending their teachers there after nearly 60% of them failed the EOI B2 test.  This is a very grave matter - pushing a teacher with a shaky B2 level to teach a subject can result in confusion on the part of the students and could cause errors from the teachers to become fossilised in the students, who having heard the mistake from the teacher, use it themselves thinking it is correct.  I have seen this happen first hand where students who came to the academy I worked in were, for example, convinced that we say “persons” rather than “people” in English because their PE teacher said so. 

I’ve also seen first hand the experience of teachers who felt obliged to obtain a B2 or C1 certificate because their school suddenly decided it was necessary.  Some schools offered grants to teachers to pay for the registration for Cambridge exams and they duly attended classes to try and get them.  It was clear that some of these teachers had no interest in language and were simply driven to get the paper in order to keep their job.  It’s a very sad state of affairs and I’m not convinced it’s going to improve the students level in the long term if we have reluctant teachers using the language.

The solution seems to be to focus more time on the language teachers that we already have - grants for exchanges abroad seem to be going in large part to those with no linguistic background whereas they should be going to language teachers who already have a base so that they can refresh and improve their level.  Increasing the hours dedicated to language teaching could also be an option.  Finally, I think the plan should take a more progressive approach, focus perhaps on infantil and primaria and make sure that teachers who are in training now come out with a suitable level then progressively increase the requisites for new teachers in secondary. 

While it may sound like I am very critical of the plan, I do believe it is a step in the right direction but there are some snags that need to be smoothed out if it is to really work.

We then moved onto talking about CLIL, Gonzalo explained what CLIL is and where it comes from; our classmate Lorena then delivered a presentation on CLIL and eTwinning.  The eTwinning program seems to me to be a very useful tool for teachers and it allows students to embark on projects in conjunction with other schools across Europe.