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The methodology is flexible, and can be tailored to the needs of students. By adapting a carefully studied active method of teaching the individual needs of each student in the group can be met. This ensures a more stimulating and interesting learning experience, and helps the student to retain more of what they learn. Students will learn the necessary skills they communication outside of the classroom. Four linguistic skills are applied: Comprehension; Oral Expression; Reading; Written Expression.
All students take part in following classroom activities:- Correction of Homework and Reviewing Difficulties: The homework consists of exercises, grammar work and in some cases the preparation of a topic by one of the students to be presented to the rest of the group. This helps each student to attain autonomy and practice in both spoken and written Spanish. The new grammar that is taught will be repeated at the end of each lessons, both oral and written.
- Conversation: Each group can choose a topic of conversation either from a list provided by the teacher or they provide their own according to their interest. This segment of class time in held either in the school, outside on the square, on the beach, or in the market.
- Grammar: Grammar is taught as it is used in everyday language. Attention is paid to both the spoken and written language bearing in mind the needs of the individual student. Through practical situations the teacher explains the newly learned grammar.
- Current Events: The Spanish press will be used as a basis for discussion about current events and Spanish and Latin American culture.
- Audio-Visual Activities: Using television news broadcasts or movies, songs on the radio and slides of history and/or literature, students will be questioned by the teacher as to what is being conveyed in Spanish. The students will then listen and/or view the material again to deduce whether or not they are correct and a final exercise will be given.
For student enrolled in the Superintensive Course or those who study for 4 weeks or more, the following activities are also included:- History, Art & Theatre: Study of Spanish and Latin American history, art and theatre. Work is based on books and/or audio-visual material.
- Essays: The student can choose a book from the library and will write a weekly essay about it.
- School Magazine: The school publishes its own monthly magazine and each group will receive one particular subject and one general subject from the teacher to work on. Students will be given a deadline date to hand in the materials. Computers, the library, daily press and a dictionary will be provided to accomplish the task. Each student will receive a certificate stating their collaboration of editing the magazine.
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