Teaching English as a Foreign Language

After watching the 30 minutes documentary called “Do you speak English?”, I would like to reflect about some questions that are covered in the programme. To begin with, I want to talk about the importance of knowing English. I know a lot of people, especially old people with more than 40 years old, that have no idea about speaking English. That is because they didn’t learn English at school. Maybe in the past, English was not so important but, at the present, English is the most commonly spoken language in the world and we can find it in different aspects of our life like: technology, science, tourism, education, etc. If we want to travel to other countries, we can use English to communicate in there, but increasingly, we have to use in our own city because, as I analysed in another entry of this blog, there are a lot of foreign people living here. That’s why, we can find almost all the jobs that apply people with a good level of English. Although the schools are conscious a...

Currently, there are more than 1.600.000 inhabitants in the municipality of Barcelona and less than 290.000 of them are foreign people (27,36%, a 2% less than 10 years ago). Of these foreign people, 37,51% come from Europe; 32,01% come from America; 23,16% come from Asia; 7,14% come from Africa and 0,17% come from Oceania. Eixample is the district that have more population in Barcelona, with 266.416 inhabitants. It is also the district that have more foreign people, with 53.393 of population (18,74%). Ten years ago, Eixample was the second district with more foreign people, the first one was Ciutat Vella. At present, in this district a 42,67% of people come from Europe; 32,29% come from America; 21,29% come from Asia; 3,51% come from Africa and 0,24% come from Oceania. In Pre-Primary, Primary and Secondary schools of the Eixample, there are 2.594 of foreign students, 10,9% of the total of the students; 50,11% of them go to public schools and 49,89% go to private s...