Found at: http://www.anguillaguide.com/article/articleprint/4552/-1/140/
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Thoughts Of An Expat Living In Anguilla: Hablas espanol? By: Penny Legg
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Have you ever tried to learn a foreign language? Not easy is it? As native speakers we do not think about tenses or parts of speech, we just open our mouths and out pops what we want to say.
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Language Support students at the Stoney Ground Primary School
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At my school in the UK, as at the Albina Lake Hodge Comprehensive here on Anguilla, both French and Spanish lessons were compulsory. I was pretty hopeless as I kept getting the two mixed up. Spanish was always my stronger language as, to me, it was the more straightforward. Most of what you see, you pronounce.
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Language Support students at the Stoney Ground Primary School
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I found having a smattering of a foreign language or two quite useful when my parents took my brother and I off on holidays when we were young. It was handy to be able to ask for directions for example and I found that people were appreciative of my efforts to speak their language rather than expecting them to know mine.
I was working in the British High Commission in Bangladesh when Spanish speaking Bangladeshi’s started coming into the office. We dealt with many cases of fraudulently issued documents and human trafficking from Bangladesh to Europe was big business. Someone had hit on the jolly idea that just possibly no one on the British staff in Dhaka actually spoke Spanish, so why not try to bamboozle them into thinking that all was well with their documents if their authenticity was called into question? I should point out that Spain had no representation in Bangladesh and British Missions have historically assisted unrepresented European Union Nationals, as these people were claiming to be.
When no one else was free it fell to me, with my rusty schoolgirl Spanish to meet these people in the first instance. I found that I could still understand what was being said even after over twenty years of non use, but I could not think of the words to reply. My Spanish was also out of date; language being a living entity, evolving as it is used. I began to give thought to brushing it up and started looking about me for the means to do so.
Whilst I was doing this, my husband heard that his job was to bring us to Anguilla. ‘Tourists,’ I thought to myself, ‘mean that there might be a need to speak something other than English.’ More reason to brush up my language skills in case I needed them on the island.
I enrolled at the Open University, the leading British distance learning institute, to take a 2 year Spanish Certificate. When I arrived on island I also heard about Anguilla’s night school language options, which consist of classes in Conversational Spanish and French. The two Spanish courses in conjunction, I felt sure, would be just what I needed.
I had half expected the beginners’ class at the Albina Lake Hodge Comprehensive School to consist of basic vocabulary; the weather, introducing oneself, asking for a beer in a bar. However, I soon found that although some of these elements were included in the syllabus, this was no ‘holiday essentials’ course. If an adult is going to learn to speak a foreign language, knowledge of grammar is needed too and so this was taught from day one and integrated into the class content.
The twelve week course built up to quite intricate conversations with lots of student participation. All of us used the Spanish we were learning each lesson from the very beginning. We were invited by our tutor, who had a great sense of humour and an excellent knowledge of the language, to think up scenarios for role play and we frankly had fun doing so. Each lesson was a joy to look forward to - despite the homework! When we all passed the short examination at the end we felt rightly pleased with ourselves.
It was interesting to note the walks of life that the students represented. There were civil servants, school students, retired people, housewives and teachers all of whom could see the value and the need for learning to speak another language on Anguilla.
Recently I was invited to volunteer at one of the island’s primary schools teaching English to Spanish speaking children. There are more and more Spanish speaking Anguillians arriving on the island, primarily from the Dominican Republic where their grandparents emigrated to find work. Anguilla has two peripatetic English as a Foreign, or Additional, Language teachers. They travel between the primary schools teaching English to children with first languages of not just Spanish, but Chinese and Serbian too. The Government of Anguilla, confronted by the sudden challenge of providing education for these children, has responded by awarding a scholarship to Tracelyn Hamilton to study an MA in Teaching English as a Second Language at the University of Bristol, UK. Tracelyn and Lisa Diane Lloyd, a native Spanish speaking teacher, now provide English language tuition, under the supervision of Sandra Fahie, to nearly sixty primary children whose first language is not English. It is hoped that by concentrating on primary level children they will be fluent in English by the time they reach secondary level.
So far it is early days for me but I am finding that volunteering to help is rewarding. The children are bright and want to learn. With recent memories of my own language learning experience I know how hard it is for them. These children need to learn English to fully integrate into Anguillian society. As they learn and grow they will be invaluable to the island in their ability not just to aid their parents in learning English but also later, as bilingual adults, helping to bridge the gap between the Anguillian and Hispanic cultures.