Study at PSC

Spanish is an exciting study of Hispanic society and culture, our engaging and interactive lessons will help you to speak and write idiomatic and increasingly complex, accurate Spanish. Our support and conversation workshops are designed to hone linguistic skills. You will listen to and research authentic material in the Languages IT suite, and work towards fluency with our language assistants. There is an opportunity to enrich your cultural studies with trips to Spain, the BFI and the Cervantes Theatre.

By means of a thematic approach, you will get to study the contemporary society and culture, history, politics and everyday life of Spain and Latin America. You will learn to speak and write at length in Spanish about these aspects of Spanish-speaking heritage, cultures and societies. You should expect to engage in whole class discussion, small group work and pair work. You will develop analytical and evaluative skills and improve your level in the four basic language skills of listening, reading, writing and speaking, and you will also have the opportunity to visit Spain on the annual college study trip. Enthusiasm and a commitment to learning are essential to language acquisition at this level.

The practical, applied approach to the study of Spanish at this level means that it is useful to students of the arts and sciences alike. The course will enable you to progress on to further study of languages, whilst being equally rewarding for those not intending to pursue the subject beyond A Level.

We also offer a 1 Year course leading to an AS qualification in Spanish. This is aimed at students with a GCSE grade 6 in the language, who would like to continue with Spanish as a 4th subject.

Year 1:
The course will move you on from GCSE covering the skills of reading, writing, speaking and listening. You will also gain a greater knowledge of grammatical structures and so develop accuracy in the language. Teaching is based on a thematic methodology and the language is taught through a variety of contemporary issues, using a range of authentic resources, to support your progress and build up your confidence in the use of language. A study of a film will also be a focus at this level.

Year 2:
The course will enable you to develop your linguistic skills further whilst continuing to enhance your knowledge of the target language, countries and cultures. You will use the language to present viewpoints, develop, analyse and evaluate arguments both when speaking and writing.

You will study aspects of the contemporary society and culture of Spain and other Spanish-speaking countries.  You will study four main themes at A level, and the study of a book and a film will also be part of the A level course.

Lessons are taught mainly in Spanish and students will be working individually, in pairs or in small groups on a variety of activities including reading, keeping track of notes from topics covered in class, vocabulary extension work making use of online resources to acquire a wider range of lexis, grammar revision and extension will also be an integral part of daily activities in class. You will engage in many speaking activities such as role-plays, discussions, presentations and debates. You will also have a weekly session with a Spanish or Latin-American language assistant to further enhance your production of the spoken language. You will work in the Language Multi-media Centre to practise your listening skills. Learning through independent active study is crucial to your progress, and carefully monitored programmes will support you in this.

All four skills, speaking, listening, reading and writing will be assessed at the end of each course, with cultural content forming a key part of the assessment. The assessment methods will be varied, and will include translation, research, presenting and speaking, writing and listening/reading comprehension and grammar.

Assessment

Listening, Reading, Writing and Speaking are the skills assessed through cultural content

Component 1: Speaking 30%

Component 2: Listening, Reading and Translation-from Spanish into English and English into Spanish 50% 

Component 3: Critical and analytical response in Writing 20%

Spanish can be studied in combination with any other course in higher education. Many courses including those in the sciences will offer students with good language skills the chance to take part of their degree course abroad. Graduates in modern languages are in short supply and employers are increasingly keen to recruit people with language skills.

There are many good reasons to study Spanish, and these include:

• More than 23 million people around the world were learning Spanish in 2023.
• Spanish is the third most spoken language in the world and the second most used language in social media.
• Spanish is spoken in 23 countries as a first language.
• Knowledge of a foreign language is highly valued by Universities and employers.

Students will have access to resources from the Learning Resource Centre, the Spanish department can also loan some materials but students will need to purchase their own Online text book and study guides for the film and play we study via the online College shop for use at home.

Study Visits Abroad – The speaking exam account for a high percentage of the total mark. We therefore strongly encourage students to visit a country in which Spanish is spoken. An optional study visit takes place annually and the inclusive cost is approximately £750 for one week (excluding pocket money).

The College has a Student Support Fund for those students who have difficulty meeting the cost of course materials.

We support students travelling to Spain during the summer via the Aupair World. There is a support network with former students, who share their experience of working in Spain developing their language and communication skills.