Speaker
Diego Garcia was born and raised in suburban Detroit and shortly after graduating from the University of Michigan he relocated to his parent’s country of origin, Spain. Since then, he has passionately taught English to all levels and ages from pre-school students to university professors and participated in teacher formation, course planning, international relations, voice over and translation work. At the moment he is an associate professor at the EU Informática in the UPM and teaches English language in a primary school in Madrid. His varied experience has offered him unique insight to the overall situation of English as a second language in Spain.
Date: Tuesday 27th April 2010
Abstract
Although it seems that most of the world has come to accept the necessity of improving the quality and quantity of English language proficiency, Spain lags behind other countries in general English competence. To address this discrepancy we need to understand the root causes of Spain’s English language deficiency. Can anything be done to close the gap? The presentation will seek to look at the past and present situation of English as a second language in Spain, so as to better deal with the future of English language learning in Spain. The speaker looks at some Spain’s unique socio-historical factors with the hope that awareness of these peculiarities may better allow us to develop short and long term strategies which may enable us to improve more quickly than one would think possible.