Teach English in Tangfang Zhen - Zibo Shi

Historically, learning English in Spain has not been as valued as its European neighbours. A lot of this comes can be seen as a direct legacy of the Franco dictatorship (1939-1975) where the country experienced intense cultural insulation; every type of media and even everyday conversation was ‘hispanisized’ (other languages such as Basque, Catalan and Galician were banned at various periods from public use, institutional use and at times every day use. Today, this has meant that many of the resources students from other European countries can fall back upon to learn English do not exist in Spain. Whereas in almost every other western European country English language films and TV shows are subtitled in the local language, in Spain they are overdubbed in Spanish. This is already a vast media exposure that is lost to Spanish English language learners. Furthermore, the Spanish youth of today are then the first generation of EFL learners within Spain and therefore are not able to ask parents or other elders for assistance (in regards to homework for instance). Linguistically, the pronunciation of English can present problems to all Spanish speakers (while this includes Hispanic America, this paper will focus solely on Spain). Spanish words are pronounced how they are written. The emphasis is always on the second last vowel and if not it is denoted by an accent above the vowel upon which the emphasis should be on (for example Japón). In English a student can’t necessarily read a word and then pronounce it correctly if it’s the first time they’ve ever encountered the word. Some letters in particular pose their own unique problems. In Spanish the letters ‘v’ and ‘b’ are pronounced the same; however this is not the case for English. This often poses problems in pronouncing the difference between words such as ‘vet’ and ‘bet.’ The letter ‘j’ also poses similar problems; where a Spanish speaker would be prone to pronouncing the word ‘joke’ as ‘yoke.’ Another huge linguistic problem for Spanish speakers is the use of prepositions. An easy example to look at is the use of the words ‘in’ and ‘on,’ especially considering in Spanish the one word ‘en’ is used for both. The situations in which you may use ‘in’ or ‘on’ can then be very confusing to a native Spaniard. Consider a conversational exchange as such and the confusion is plain to see for someone who is not a native English speaker: “Did John arrive on time?” “Yes, John arrived just in time.” Whilst both sentences speak about the same individual, John, and both are speaking about his timely arrival, one sentence uses the preposition ‘on,’ while the other uses ‘in.’ To contrast some of these problems, a side effect of the global financial crisis in Spain, where local jobs became scarce, meant many young people had to travel to foreign countries for work. This often meant travelling to the UK, USA, Canada and other English speaking countries in order to find work. Because of this there has been a motivated effort to teach students more English language skills in Spanish educational institutions not only because of its global importance but its importance in finding work for Spanish youth who are finding it difficult to find work in their own country. The Spanish language presents unique linguistic difficulties for Spaniards wanting to English and, if ever teaching in Spain, it is important to keep this in mind. Furthermore unlike its European neighbours, Spain has suffered unique historical consequences that have limited the scope of English language learning within the country in past decades.