My summer course in Segovia: discussing how to teach Spanish vocabulary
El aprendizaje de lenguas extranjeras nos permite adquirir nuevas almas - Ennio (poeta latino) Learning foreign languages allows us to acquire new souls - Ennio (Latin poet) This Summer I was lucky enough to be one of the 30 teachers from all over the world to be awarded a grant by the Spanish Ministry of Education to spend a week in Segovia, Spain, where UNED professors Alicia San Mateo Valdehíta, Fernando Sánchez Díaz and María Luisa Veuthey Martínez led three separate sessions on vocabulary acquisition. All sessions were collaborative and we started the first one with the question: what vocabulary should we teach and in what order? We all agreed that teaching vocabulary should be done according to themes, as using authentic texts can at times prove difficult to use and can have a detrimental effect on motivation. As well as this, we recognised the importance of having a plan, so as to ensure that words are gradually introduced and revisited on a regular basis to be stored into ...