First Day at Grammar School

Written by a 50 year old female Finance Manager from Kent.

Written on September 15th 2010.

We had been studying Spanish at day college in Sittingbourne for three years. And at the end of school last year it all went wrong. Our Spanish teacher (from Mexico) seemed to loose her way, and 4 weeks before our exam was due, she suddenly moved the goal posts regarding the dates of the exam and even that she would be there on the day of the exam. So for the start of this year the group voted with our feet. We searched the internet, and asked friends if they had any idea of a good way to learn Spanish. We were recommended a Boys Grammar school that was excellent in languages, where their pupils get A* marks for Spanish. And to our surprise the head of languages there agreed, as an experiment, to take on our mature group. Not something they had done before.

Our teacher, Julie, is a young (mid to late 20’s?) who is vibrant and enthusiastic. She has already given us so much in one lesson. Because she is English, has no relationship with Spain, other than she has studied and visited there lots; and because she seems to have such a simplistic way of explaining Spanish, we are all invigorated. The school building was built in the 1920s, yet inside the technology is up to date.

Much of the lesson was conducted via websites shown on a large screen at the front of the room and speakers, or on the dry white board. Our group is made up of 2 chaps and 7 ladies. Most of us have a place in Spain so have a real desire to learn Spanish. We were given some tricks to help us sound more Spanish: make the vowels very short, and all the same length; some words to start sentences – ‘pues’ (means ‘so’) or ‘vaya’ (means ‘well’). We had a 10 min session where we were not allowed to speak English….some of us struggled, but we all enjoyed it. A buzzer noise went off every 35 mins to indicate that the lesson was over. We had two lessons back to back, which seemed to go very quickly.

Theresa