Last Tuesday 5th November we were holding the seminar “Get you English Right”, in collaboration with Premium Languages, member of the Spanish Chamber.
Tom Newman, from the Spanish Chamber, welcomed attendees on behalf of our institution and introduced the representatives from Premium Languages.
In first place, Adrián Vega, Director of Premium Languages, addressed participants to explain the aim of the session and that language is usually divided into two main areas: Active language (which comprises speaking and writing) and passive language (which includes listening and reading). Out of this division, the trickiest are speaking and listening, and therefore, the session will focus on them.
Adrián Vega and Catherine Whyte during the seminar.
Mr. Vega then gave the floor to Ms. Catherine Whyte, who was in charge of delivering the session. She has extensive first-hand experience teaching English abroad. In fact, after completing her TEFL qualifications she began working at an English institute in Chile teaching students from the lowest levels to advanced ones, as well as helping them to prepare the IELTS and TOEFL examinations. As a result, she has a wide knowledge of Spanish-speaker students.
Following on Adrián’s explanation about languages subdivisions, Catherine approached the session with the aim to shed some light on tricky speaking and listening features for Spanish-speakers. The purpose was to help attendees understand what specific hurdles they are likely to come across with when learning English and how to avoid them.
She provided plenty of examples for participants to practice, which ranged from using verbs correctly, pronunciation of different endings and words starting/finishing in “s”, singular versus plural uses, identifying the correct preposition and subject, etc.
Catherine explaining the most common mistakes in English made by Spanish speakers.
Unfortunately, as Catherine pointed out, some rules and structures must be learnt by heart as there is no logical explanation that accounts for them. The most effective way to assimilate them is by practicing.
In order to grasp every detail, attendees were listening attentively and showed great levels of interaction and engagement throughout the session. After the workshop and a round of questions, the participants could exchange their impressions of the event while enjoying some breakfast treats.
The attendees were listening attentively throughout the session.
If you want to find out other activities that the Spanish Chamber is organising, we encourage you to keep an eye on our UPCOMING EVENTS section within our website. Furthermore, you can also subscribe to our weekly newsletter in order to receive updates with our events!