30 minuts video: "Do you speak English?"

Today, I will reflect on 30 minuts program titled "Do you speak English?"

If you prefer watching the video before reading my reflection, you will find it below: 

Do you speak English? 

It is well-known that, historically, Spain has been influenced by Franco’s dictatorship besides some Spanish people’s illiteracy. Despite we got through this historical fact, Spain is not promoting strategies to improve our linguistic knowledge in English and other languages.

I totally agree with Portugal strategies: films, series and TV programmes are watched in their original versions. Actually, Spain also offers the possibility of watching films in original version if we program our channels to do that. However, people don’t take advantage of it. For example, when I am alone at home, I tend to watch foreign channels such as BBC or CNN in order to improve my listening skills in English. Nevertheless, my parents don’t hesitate to turn over the channel when I go to the toilet. They don’t like English! Perhaps because they don’t understand it, but they don’t even make an effort to learn it! Most parents don’t consider important learning English or other languages; their language identity is so strong that they think another language will make them lose such “attachment”.

In "30 minuts" video, Camilo Terrazón (President of Catalonia Cinema entrepreneurs) states that Catalan translations in films are “the most natural way of watching them”. I understand his concerning, since Catalan is a minority language and he may feel original versions like a threat for his language identity. Yet, Spain must go on and try to foster English in Education without leaving behind other minority languages. Indeed, a heteroglossic ideology of bilingualism or even plurilingualism it is for me the best option to keep all local languages at the same time students develop English communicative skills. Languages should be linked one to each other, not separated as teachers have been teaching them (García, 2009). However, how can teachers achieve that without society help? 

When it comes to the well-known statement “the sooner, the better”, I agree with all what we discussed last session in class: we don’t have enough capacities when we are babies to learn meaningfully a new language apart from our mother tongue. In my case, I didn’t enrol an academy until I needed it, when I was 16 years old. I started to learn English at Primary school, but I didn’t have to put my English communication skills into practice until my last Secondary course. Here it was when I felt I needed improve my English meaningfully as an extracurricular activity.  The grammar was not a problem for me, since I knew perfectly all English rules. Yet, I had to improve my pronunciation, widen my vocabulary and develop my fluency. It took me 6 years to achieve an advanced level.

There are families with little economic resources that cannot pay extracurricular English activities or summer camps to their kids. Moreover, pupils don’t have enough chances to practice English in class because of many reasons: teachers’ lack of English competences, a great number of students per class and so on. What I propose is looking for strategies. In my case, I haven’t any chance of travelling or living abroad. But, I found other ways of improving my English skills. For instance, I have a Scottish penfriend, I watch all films and series in English with subtitles, and twice a week I do language exchanges with an American teacher. Therefore, a great idea for schools, it could be fostering language exchanges by email, letter or Skype with other schools from UK or USA.

In short, I consider that teacher are not just the responsible for the lack of students' English proficiency, but it is also society. Indeed, schools are a reflect of it, so if Spanish population don't agree in promoting other languages at home, through TV programmes, and others resources at schools, teachers and learners will not be able to do anything else. In any way, teachers must go on learning and improving their English skills and teaching language strategies in class. If we have qualified teacher for education in multilingualism contexts, we will have competent and respectful students towards languages and cultures.