EDMUND Mensah arrived in Malaga a year ago, and in that time he has learned enough Spanish to be able to read ‘El Quijote’. There is nothing exceptional about this child: more than 16,000 immigrant schoolchildren all over Malaga province are also learning to read, write and speak Spanish in 122 schools all over the province, in a special language-learning programme that allows them to integrate fast into Spanish society. The programme is based on so-called ‘language adaptation’ classes which have been available to immigrants since 2001, allowing immigrant children of all nationalities to learn the Spanish language quickly.

Due to the great diversity of pupils, all from different cultural and educational backgrounds, the classes are divided into varying levels, although the result is always the same. This does not mean that each nationality has its own class: children of up to seven different nationalities might find themselves together in the same class, but the specially qualified teachers know how to deal with this diversity. Pilar Pavón, Spanish-language teacher in the Vicente Espinel secondary school and the Universidad Laboral, is one such specialist. Three times each week, she teaches Spanish language to groups of Russians, Ukrainians, Chinese, Africans and Bulgarians.

In spite of this diversity of nationality, the classes are quite personalised, with only three or four in each group to ensure efficient results. “These are language immersion classes in which we have children who do not speak a single word of the language when they arrive,” she tells us. “We do a lot of conversation work, based on their own everyday lives, so that they can pick up the few words and phrases they need to communicate.”

Difficulties

Pilar Pavón is well aware of the problems these children face in a country with a different language from their own. “Given the fact that many of them have no Spanish at all, they tend to stick with others of the same nationality, and avoid contact with the rest of the children,” she says. “That means we have to watch them all the time to ensure they try to speak Spanish during school hours, at least.”

But in spite of the enormous difficulties facing these children as soon as they arrive in Spain, Pavón never ceases to be surprised at the fast progress they make in learning Spanish. “I’ve had Chinese children who could not even get close to pronouncing words in our language, and inside three months they are chatting to their new friends in school. I often wonder how quick we could learn Chinese if we went there to live.”

The proximity of the country they emigrated from counts a lot in learning Spanish, because the language structure and sounds tend to be more similar. “The Bulgarians and Ukrainians learn the language very quickly, in three months or so,” says Pavón. It is much harder, on the other hand, for the Chinese children, who can take up to a year to learn to write freely in Spanish. Her best pupils, she says, are the Moroccans and Nigerians, who learn quickly and rapidly put what they learn to use to converse with others, even if their level of writing is not so good.

Immersion classes

Some pupils do badly in school generally because of their inability to learn the language fast, and when this happens, they are taken out of some normal classes to take extra Spanish-language classes. “Demand for Spanish-language classes increases year by year, with the arrival of more and more immigrants, and for them we have the so-called immersion classes, where they tend to learn very quickly,” says Tomás Boyan, the educational psychologist in the Sagrado Corazón secondary school.

Although there are children of many different nationalities in each class, the basic aim of the school is to provide individual and effective teaching for each child.

Strategy

The presence of so many immigrant children in Malaga schools has given rise to a new form of teaching, called inter-disciplinary. “Teachers of different subjects co-operate in the integration of these children, with class activities that stimulate language learning,” says Boyano. As far as Pilar Pavón is concerned, these special classes are an integral part of the school programme, whose function is to enable the children in need of them to evolve normally in the classroom. “For this reason, all the teachers are willing to help as much as they can, proposing new ideas all the time and making every effort to make them work,” she says.

Most interesting for the children, however, are the inter-cultural exchanges that are organised in the Sagrado Corazón secondary school. Principal Alfonso Puche is very proud of the fact that his school is a pioneer in this type of project, called ‘School: a Place of Peace.’ “We have talks about cultural diversity, and we even have an international gastronomy competition in the school,” he tells us.

Personal experience

The work is hard, but the rewards are worth waiting for. “We all love it, because we see children coming here without being able to speak to anybody in the school, and then we see them with their friends, chatting and laughing,” says Pavón.

Boyano warns, nevertheless, of potential problems in the future: “We have to ensure that these children do not form into gangs based on nationality, or we’ll have a situation similar to that of France in recent months.” If he and his teachers can help it, this will never happen.

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