High School – Bachillerato
Children learn compulsory English from the age of 6 until the age of 16 when they finish secondary school. If they go on to high school and university, English is still present in schools, even applied to many subjects.
But the perception of these young people is that they do not know how to speak English and even understand little or nothing when they speak to a native speaker. This is one of the great handicaps of Spanish education: despite having spent all their childhood and youth studying English, they do not even reach the B2 level. And why does this happen? It turns out that, approximately every new academic year, students go back and start again from a lower level than the one they were at the previous year. This slows down the progress and the lessons are not optimal.
When is it best to learn languages: childhood or adolescence?
And even though many consider that there are greater abilities to learn English during childhood, there are elements of adolescence that enhance the learning of foreign languages:
«It is a proven fact that preadolescents and adolescents are more effective than children in learning the morphology, syntax and lexicon of a second language» (González, 1991).
Adolescents possess a strong disposition to learn English due to their psychological profile. Formal logical thinking helps adolescents learn English: During adolescence, the ability to examine situations and formulate hypotheses about them is consolidated. At this stage, various techniques are used to memorise, depending on the class and the amount of data to remember.
At this age, teenagers have a heavy teaching load and motivation in English classes is our priority. It is essential that they feel that their learning is meaningful while increasing the difficulty of the language by adding expressions and vocabulary that enrich their fluency in the foreign language. The students prepare for one of the most important tests which is the EBAU. The result of this exam will determine their future and put to the test everything they have acquired over the years.
