In two weeks I will start teaching an elementary Spanish class in my university and I'm very nervous!! I've taught Spanish before, but it was in very different scenarios: two little rich kids in Spain going to a British college, African immigrants in Spain, and one-on-one mentoring. What scares me even more is that I've been there, I've been a college freshman taking a foreign language class just to fulfill a requirement... and it was horrible!! I had two different French professors, both equally bad, that would just sit and lecture off the book for 2 hours. 2 years of French and didn't learn a thing!
I now have an amazing Italian professor that has me speaking and thinking in italiano after just one semester. I see that my Italian professor is way more engaged than my previous foreign language instructors and I'm actually having fun learning the language! I know that everybody has a different learning style, and I would really like to learn different teaching methods. I want my students to leave my class speaking and thinking in SPANISH!!!!
So, the whole purpose of this post is to ask you for advice:
Have you taken a foreign language class? if so, was it a good class or a bad class? why? what activities did you professor use? or what needed improvement?
Any response will be greatly appreciated ;)
MJ
I now have an amazing Italian professor that has me speaking and thinking in italiano after just one semester. I see that my Italian professor is way more engaged than my previous foreign language instructors and I'm actually having fun learning the language! I know that everybody has a different learning style, and I would really like to learn different teaching methods. I want my students to leave my class speaking and thinking in SPANISH!!!!
So, the whole purpose of this post is to ask you for advice:
Have you taken a foreign language class? if so, was it a good class or a bad class? why? what activities did you professor use? or what needed improvement?
Any response will be greatly appreciated ;)
MJ
I took Spanish 201 and 202, which are supposed to be intermediate classes. Honestly, it was just to get those 6 credits the university requires to get my undergraduate degree. I am a native Spanish speaker, therefore, I just boosted my GPA and learned nothing from the class. My gringo teacher spoke Spanish like my 7 years old nephew does, so I was about to tell everyone in my classroom,"you know what people from now on I'll be the teacher" ... if you want your students to make an improvement, pair them with Spanish speakers and make them work together, my English teacher used to do that in high school with her ESL students, it worked!
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