0. My Teaching Methodology

Here you can find diverse materials to use in Spanish Second Language Acquisition classes. All the materials included in this portfolio are based on the communicative language teaching approach, emphasizing the pragmatic side of language teaching with real life contexts introduced at the beginning of each lesson. Hence, students will first read the real life situation and then, all the activities will follow this context, introducing real examples that students would possibly face in a Spanish speaking country. Consequently, the lessons created have also specific objetives related to acquiring expressions and a base knowledge in order to be able to successfully communicate at the end of class.

The materials in this portfolio follow the main principles of the communicative language teaching approach proposed by Klaus Brandl (2008) in Communicative Language Teaching in Action:

1. Use tasks as an organizational principle.
2. Promote learning by doing.
3. Input needs to be rich.
4. Materials need to be authentic to reflect real life situations and demands.
5. The teacher needs to maximize the use of the target language.
6. Input needs to be meaningful, comprehensible and elaborated.
7. Promote cooperative and collaborative learning.
8. Focus on form and meaning.
9. Provide error corrective feedback.
10. Recognize and respect affective factors of learning.

The creation for this portfolio has also followed the principle that not all students acquire a second language through the same methodologies or teaching styles, some of them might prefer reading while others might prefer listening. Some second language students best learn a language visually. Thus, if a teacher uses these materials divided into grammar, listening comprehension, oral communication, reading comprehension and vocabulary (using different methodologies in each presented lesson), students will be able to acquire Spanish by practicing their writing, reading, and listening, but for the most part their oral skills. Specially, as the portfolio has been created based on the communicative approach, most of the activities included here will require students to talk to at least one partner in class.

Some of my students' comments at Illinois State University:

"Gorka's class was well organized, informative, engaging and based on real life situations."

"The instructor was most effective in helping us by giving real life examples."

"Gorka provided many useful examples and situations to understand Spanish."

"He explained everything appropriately, specially using context based examples."

"I could learn Spanish in Gorka's class and I think that the real examples and contexts he gave us were very helpful."