The Aim:

 To develop and improve your conversational skills in Spanish, practising general conversation and the themes from the Eduqas specification in small groups.

  To improve your language skills, accuracy (grammar, vocabulary) and your pronunciation and intonation.

  To improve your confidence and your ability to communicate and express your opinions and ideas in Spanish to perform to the best of your ability in the oral examination.

 To enable you to expand and embrace the cultural knowledge of Spanish-speaking countries. 

As stated above, the aim is to help you with your conversational skills, but the idea also is that you enjoy the lessons and feel comfortable taking part in them.

Do not hesitate to ask if you do not understand and would like to go over anything covered in class.  If you have any questions or doubts, please ask. Both  Sara  and  Alicia  are here to help and support you.    

HOW IT WORKS

 You will be in a small group of 5-6 students (max.) with the Spanish Assistant, Alicia  AGarcia@qeliz.ac.uk. She only works part-time so you will only find her in College on Wednesdays and Thursdays.

The weekly conversation practice session will take place in room 120 and will last 1 hour.

Attendance to conversation sessions is compulsory and a register is taken, just like in any other lesson, and absences will be also marked.  As you only have one lesson a week and we only spend a couple of weeks on each topic, missing any lessons will impact greatly on your attendance record as well as your progress.  If you know in advance you can’t attend, it is your responsibility to contact Alicia – either personally or via email, and copying Sara on it – to let her know you won’t be in the lesson. If you fail to attend a lesson and you do not contact Alicia or Sara, your absence will be reported to Sara . If you miss a second lesson, Sara will contact your tutor. After three absences, Sara will contact your Principal Tutor, the Head of Languages (Louise Nicholson) and your parents/guardian will also be informed.

Because probably not many of you had the chance to practise actual conversation at GCSE - it is usually more of a memorisation exercise -, holding a conversation in Spanish can seem daunting at times, especially at the beginning, so it is important that you make the most of the conversation sessions. You need to make the most of this opportunity to hone your speaking skills.  

Missing lessons will impact greatly on your progress and your confidence. Catching up with the work missed is really no substitute for actually being here as you will miss valuable information, tips, ideas, etc. All of this will, in turn, affect your exam performance. It is therefore vital that you catch up with the topic missed: get in touch with someone from your group to find out what was done and any homework set and, if possible, try to arrange to attend an alternative session. A  timetable of all conversation classes will be displayed on the door - remember that we share the room with German.

Conversation classes aim to help you by working in smaller groups so you are more at ease in a ‘cosy’, friendly environment.  Please remember that you are required to work as a team and the weekly classes should therefore be viewed as a chance to consolidate learning in preparation for the final oral.

HOMEWORK

 Homework will be set weekly and we will work with topic worksheets. These will help to consolidate knowledge, correct use of tenses, vocabulary and expressions.  You will therefore be expected to take notes, to write down your ideas/sentences for each of the themes (positive, negative aspects, problems, solutions as well as personal opinion) as well as participating actively in the lessons. 

It is vital that you take the time to do the homework. There is a lot of reading and preparation involved and the idea is that you use that preparation to talk during the conversation sessions, not to read and then try to ‘wing it.’ If you do not understand some of the work covered in your absence, make sure you ask Alicia at the earliest opportunity (by mail if you can’t find her before your lesson).  

Use resources like the websites below to help you with your preparation, as well as keeping up-to-date with what’s happening in the Spanish-speaking world - very important!

Online newspapers, news & magazines:

http://elpais.com/                                 http://www.abc.es/           https://www.efe.com/efe/espana/1

http://www.elmundo.es/                      http://www.20minutos.es/                 http://www.hola.com/

http://www.about.com/espanol/          http://www.bbc.com/mundo               http://es.euronews.com/

Television:        

http://www.rtve.es/                              http://www.telecinco.es/        

http://www.rtve.es/noticias/                http://www.rtve.es/directo/la-1/

http://www.antena3.com/                    http://www.arte.tv/guide/es/?country=GB

Online cinema reviews:           http://www.labutaca.net/

Online dictionaries & pronunciation: 

http://www.wordreference.com/         http://www.spanishdict.com/             http://www.rae.es/

http://forvo.com/languages/es/           http://www.linguee.com/ (a unique translation tool)

General Spanish language:      

http://spanish.about.com/

Portal + search engine & directory:    https://es.yahoo.com/            http://www.google.es