Have you ever heard of someone learning to drive without ever getting in a car and driving it?

Exactly! just like no one learns how to drive without driving a real car, just like one learns how to speak Spanish without getting into real Spanish conversations!

Spanish can be taught and learned in many different approaches and methods. In Global Speak Academy, we focus on letting the students take center stage and practice their conversations without being scared of asking questions or being incorrect, which keeps our students motivated and excited to learn with us. The methodology our teachers use is widely known as "Communicative Language Teaching(CLT)", this method is described by Cambridge University as "Language for Real Life". This is an approach that differs from others because it gives the opportunity to personalize and tailor the lessons to the students' interests.

There is often the misunderstanding that traditional language teaching methods provide the necessary skills to learn how to have proper conversations in a language. In reality, these methods often only provide enough skills to fulfill a curriculum and eventually get a grade that doesn't reflect the student's ability to speak Spanish.

The mistake that is often made by traditional language institutions is trying to teach a second language differently than how you would teach a primary language. For example; you learned how to speak your mother tongue many years before you knew what a verb or a subject was, however, in most Spanish schools, students are faced with grammatical and verbal nuances and then are expected to be able to have conversations in Spanish. This traditional method works poorly for building communicative skills and usually results in the students losing motivation.

This makes the class less interesting for the student and will therefore make the student learn less. Usually, students in average language schools will memorize grammatical structures and unnecessary vocabulary with no contextual relevance to the students which leaves them empty-handed each time they leave the class. In this Academy, the student will only and exceptionally learn about real topics that the student already knows about in their primary language.

The communicative approach to learning Spanish consists of expanding the students´ general knowledge of Spanish by providing them with communicative skills that can be used in conversations regarding the fields that the students are interested in; sports, music, art, food, and traveling... In Global Speak Academy it is not frowned upon to use translating tools if that can help the student learn how to make unique and personal sentences that expand their vocabulary and confidence. We recommend to use as many tools that can contribute to fun learning as posible, such as interesting conversation topics, online interactive card games, negotiations...

The lessons are taught in groups of 5 in Google Meets, where teachers can make use of the online blackboard to help visualize certain concepts and situations for better understanding. Then the students are set up in situations of negotiation and interactive games where the only way to succeed is by speaking with one another in Spanish.

This also gives the student the opportunity to learn their second language the same way they would learn their primary language, by practicing speaking and pronunciation with words and expressions that are relevant to ones day-to-day life. This shows the students how they can learn Spanish through conversations, as this is a great way to pick up common phrases used by the people that speak it, and shows them the non-verbal communication that is used in everyday Spanish!

The teachers in this academy are qualified (CLT) language teachers that, tailor the teaching to the specific group's needs, this means that the students determine what content will be used and the teacher is there to guide and engage with the content. This method of teaching goes above and
beyond vocabulary and grammatical rules, we provide the path to useful
speaking, correct pronunciation, and overall conversational proficiency.

Bibliography:

-Cambridge University Press, "Communicative Language Teaching", 2010.

https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/abs/approaches-and-methods-in-language-teaching/communicative-language-teaching/8E7D11E2E3B87C1C1A2894ED45B44D51

-Cambridge University Press, "Language For Real Life: Developing Conversation Skills" 2022.

https://www.cambridge.org/elt/blog/2022/02/23/developing-conversation-skills-in-english/