Developing listening, speaking, reading, comprehension and writing skills in the Spanish class

The general objective in the Spanish Class this year is to develop the intellectual, personal, and professional abilities of the students. They need to acquire basic language skills (listening, speaking, reading and writing) to be able to communicate with speakers of the target language: Spanish.

One of the most relevant aspects in my opinion is to create active listeners: The students will acquire necessary listening skills to follow and comprehend discourse such as lectures, conversations, interviews and discussions.

They will produce a written response based on the information listening texts and they will learn to use strategies to listen actively: taking notes, preparing questions and providing feedback.

Regarding speaking skills, the objective is to develop adequate speaking skills to communicate effectively in different situations about different and relevant topics in real life situations: at the restaurant, shopping for clothes, at the travel agency, booking a flight or reserve a hotel room or introducing ourselves for the first time.

For their writing skills, the idea is to develop important writing skills that will enable them to produce academic texts required in their respective year groups. Use the correct linguistic structures and grammar when expressing their thoughts.

The students will be able to write grammatically accurate basic and complex sentences using the subject’s pronouns, verbs and adjectives correctly. Also promoting creative writing for example: the script of the role-plays or writing the lyrics for the introducing myself rap project in year 6.

Creating habits and improving their confidence: In every lesson, the year 3 to year 5 students are writing and then reading to the class information about the date, the time, how they are feeling, the season of the year, the weather, clothes that they are wearing and school subjects for the day.

Reading and comprehension exercises: The students will analyse and synthesize information presented in different sources: stories, comics, articles and news. The students will identify words and/or phrases related to the topic.

To improve in their reading and comprehension skills they must learn the question words or interrogative questions: what, where, when, why, how, how much/many, who and which, to be capable of understanding what they need to answer.

After answering all the questions about the text, the class will participate in discussions about their own experiences, to increase their knowledge and vocabulary about the specific topic they need to participate in these conversations.

The role plays help them to develop collaboration and interaction skills and creative writing and thinking. The students also prepare questions for the class to increase their interaction and participation.

Javier Vidal
Spanish Teacher