Spanish

The teaching of Spanish is shared by Mr A C Crane and other members of the modern languages staff.

Helping Yourself

There are many free websites where you can get help for learning vocabulary or practising grammar, for example:
http://www.studyspanish.com/

Language schools have websites which offer plenty of help in learning Spanish, including games and the words of Spanish pop songs. This is a popular one:
http://www.donquijote.org/spanishlanguage/

These two sites are good for students who want to practise and have some fun:
http://www.spaleon.com/
http://www.languageguide.org/espanol

This site has now started to charge an annual fee, but it is worth a look:
http://www.espanol-extra.co.uk/

The BBC provides some really helpful pages, which start at http://www.bbc.co.uk/languages/spanish/index.shtml

You will find many other weblinks as you read through this section. Many are suitable for students of any age and ability - not just for those in the year-group mentioned.

Trips to Spain

The department is very experienced in organising school visits to Spain.

For the last five years we have organized an annual home stay at Easter to Barcelona, where pupils stay with a family in the company of one or two of their friends. There are excursions every day to get to know the sights of Barcelona and the area around it. All pupils who study Spanish can come. Older pupils are especially welcome, as the trip takes place not long before the GCSE, AS and A2 speaking tests.

We also take students to nearby locations, such as the Instituto Cervantes on Deansgate and local tapas  bars for lunch.

Year 8

The text book used is Listos! 1, (Heinemann, 2002). 

Only half of the book will be used this year, the rest next year. You can download wordlists and find out more about the book from the publisher's site:
http://www.heinemann.co.uk/secondary/series/index.aspx?n=549&d=s&s=658&skey=3074

The topics studied are:

• Meeting and greeting people
• Talking about your family
• Talking about your school

Year 9

You continue using ¡Listos! 1 (Heinemann, 2002) during year 9 and it will be completed during the spring term.

You finish the year using selected pages from ¡Listos 2! so that you can complete the required work and be fully prepared for your GCSE two years later.

The topics studied are:

• Your home and life at home
• Your home town
• What you do in your free time
• Organising your social life
• Holidays

By now you may be interested in buying your own dictionary. We recommend the 'Easy Learning Spanish Dictionary' published by Collins.

They also produce 'Easy Learning Spanish Verbs' and 'Easy Learning Spanish Grammar' books - both are highly recommended.

Year 10

The text book used is Listos! 3, (Heinemann, 2002).

We also give all students Vocabulary for GCSE Spanish, 3rd ed (Nelson Thornes, 2002) and a grammar reference book Viva la gramática!  The purpose of these two additional books is to encourage independent study and they are particularly useful in helping students to prepare for coursework and the preparation of original and creative ideas for the speaking test.

The topics studied this year are:

• Personal information
• Education and holidays
• Travelling
• Sorting out problems
• Part-time jobs and work experience
• Lifestyle
• The media

The key language structures are all connected with using verbs:

• The future tense
• The imperfect tense
• The perfect tense

For GCSE we enter candidates for AQA Specification A. Full details can be found at http://www.aqa.org.uk/qual/gcse/span_a.html

All students start to prepare for the Presentation and Discussion section oof their speaking test during the spring term of year 10. This should be finished by the time they do the year 10 speaking test in May; if it works out well, then it is ready and no further work needs to be done on this during year 11.

Year 11

We use the same books as in year 10.

The main topics studied are:

• Shopping
• Youth culture
• The environment
• Education and future career

These conclude the subject matter of the GCSE specification. Topics that you have studied before are developed throughout the year so that you can understand and discuss them in a more mature manner.

The key language structures studied this year are

• The passive voice
• The conditional tense
• The subjunctive mood

The department has a large amount of reading and listening material which is always available for borrowing.

Opportunities for further independent study may be found on the websites listed above. The BBC's bitesize site for Spanish revision is excellent:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/schools/gcsebitesize/spanish/

The BBC's site for Spanish is full of help for students at all levels, whether they are struggling to keep up or if they want to push on and make progress on their own.

Lower Sixth

The text book used is ¡Sigue! 1, 2nd edition (John Murray, 2000).

Students are also given Acción Gramática, 2nd edition (Hodder, 2000), Advanced Spanish Vocabulary, 2nd edition (Nelson Thornes, 2001) and a dictionary.

Don't forget to keep using the websites for Spanish whenever you want some extra practice. This one has some demanding quizzes and exercises:
http://mld.ursinus.edu/~jarana/Ejercicios/

The specification followed for AS and A2 is with AQA.

The topics studied in the AQA course for AS are very close to what you will already have done for GCSE. The topics are dealt with in a more mature and sophisticated manner.

During the year students should read and practise regularly in their own time. These websites will be useful:
http://www.periodistadigital.com/  This site leads you to any Spanish language newspaper in the world - it's aimed at Spanish-speaking journalists. If you subscribe to the site (free of charge) you get hundreds of excellent links to sites in Spanish, not just to newspapers.

You can get a weekly news summary in Spanish from the BBC with vocabulary help from:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/education/languages/spanish/news/index.shtml

But if you prefer the safer world of exercises with answers to check your work, try:
http://www.sgci.mec.es/uk/Pub/textecla.htm

Upper Sixth

The text book used is ¡Sigue! 2 2nd edition (John Murray, 2001).

There is scarcely any new grammar to learn but the topics studied reflect the more mature concerns of an 18-year old: modern Spain and social issues which affect the world in general, but particularly countries where Spanish is spoken.

Apart from websites mentioned above many students find these two sites very helpful:

Canning House in London has a library with a postal service and you can see what books they have at http://www.canninghouse.com/library.htm

Closer to home is the Instituto Cervantes on Deansgate. Students can use their facilities and may borrow DVDs, CDs, videos and books or just sit and browse through their magazines. Their website is at http://www.cervantes.org.uk/

Exam results

Well over half of AS students reach grades C to A and nearly a third get A or B.

Our students at A2 have been particularly successful:  while 85% have reached grades C to A, 54% achieved grades A or B.