In order to make best use of all the productive and helpful aspects of the different Spanish teaching methods currently en vogue, Academia Buenos Aires has developed an approach that selectively picks the most valuable elements of each. Our objective is to take full advantage of the different pedagogical principles for Spanish language education. This way, our methodology combines the latest strategies and methods (process and communicative approaches) with the more traditional ones that have proven to be efficient over many years (formal and functional approaches).
Our selective methodology was developed to meet the requirements of learning Spanish in an immersion context, and is based on the specifications proposed by the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages. This comprehensive teaching method allows students to develop simultaneously and in a harmonic way all the foreign language learning skills (speaking, listening, reading and writing), together with strategic skills. This way, it facilitates the integration of the students’ different learning styles and abilities. Our experience shows that this approach is significantly enhancing our students’ progress in acquiring content and developing language skills.
Indeed, learning a language is not only about learning grammar and vocabulary, but requires students to be able to put into practise their knowledge in different real-life situations. This also motivates our choice to integrate specific cultural contents (particularly the Argentine and Latin-American one) into the learning process. Communication requires knowing more than simply the structure of a language: it requires implicit knowledge of the cultural context in which interactions take place.
