When babies move on from needing only milk to starting food, they are usually fed with a spoon because they don’t yet have the co-ordination or skills to get the food from their plate to their mouths. But gradually parents encourage their children to feed themselves. It’s part of learning how to be independent.
It’s the same with our learning at school. Teachers begin by telling us exactly what we need to do to pass our exams. However, as we progress, teachers expect us to become more independent with our learning. That means not just doing exactly what we’re asked, but taking an interest in learning more by ourselves.
So, for GCSE Spanish, for example, this might mean spending a bit more time memorising vocabulary. We don’t need to just wait until the next vocab test, we can be more independent and take the time to memorise vocab that we’ve been working on in class, or even get ahead. This means that we’ll be able to get much more out of class time, and we’ll progress much quicker.
For A Level Spanish, this might mean delving into the particular topic we’re looking at. Many of the topics at A Level are complex and nuanced and they can often take time to really understand all the different angles. We can be reading (in English or Spanish – both will be helpful) more about Spanish culture, Spanish history and Latin America. We can read books (Ghosts of Spain, The New Spaniards and Winter in Madrid are good ones to start with in English) or online newspaper articles. The more we are able to familiarise ourselves with the topics, the more we’ll get out of them.
If we rely only on what we learn in class, we’re going to find it hard to cover everything. A few years ago, for example, I was giving some Spanish private tuition to an elderly man in his late 70s. He had one hour of Spanish lessons a week and he didn’t do any homework apart from that one hour. Since his memory was terrible and he didn’t do any work in between lessons, he didn’t learn a single thing and eventually we stopped the classes.
So, when our teachers say they won’t be spoon feeding us anymore, they simply mean that they expect us to be more independent about our Spanish learning, and not expect everything to be covered in class time.
Many of the resources produced by Sail Through Spanish are perfect for students to work through on their own. Have a look at the shop to find resources that suit your level and you can work through them in your own time.