RAD­HI­CA DE SIL­VA

rad­hi­ca.sookraj@guardian.co.tt

Af­ter see­ing many stu­dents strug­gling with Span­ish Orals (Con­ver­sa­tion­al Span­ish) in and out of the class­room, Span­ish teacher Faria Khan de­cid­ed to do some­thing about it.

Last week, she launched on­line her first CSEC Span­ish Orals re­source book ti­tled CSEC Span­ish Oral Con­ver­sa­tion- A Crash Course.

Speak­ing to Guardian Me­dia, Khan, a teacher at AS­JA Girls Col­lege said her book was the first of its kind ded­i­cat­ed on­ly to con­ver­sa­tion­al Span­ish.

She said her stu­dents urged her to pub­lish a book be­cause there was no Span­ish re­source writ­ten lo­cal­ly that was ded­i­cat­ed to­tal­ly to CSEC Span­ish Orals.

Out­lin­ing the chal­lenges posed by Covid, Khan said: "Dur­ing the pan­dem­ic, on­line learn­ing stu­dents be­came de­pen­dent on Google trans­late and oth­er sim­i­lar apps. This im­pact­ed on crit­i­cal think­ing re­quired for de­vel­op­ing the four lan­guage learn­ing skills, es­pe­cial­ly speak­ing and writ­ing."

With the re­turn to a phys­i­cal school, she said stu­dents face chal­lenges in learn­ing the vo­cab­u­lary as well as com­mu­ni­cat­ing and writ­ing the Span­ish lan­guage.

"Teach­ers had to be cre­ative in their teach­ing strate­gies to bridge that learn­ing gap that was cre­at­ed dur­ing Covid to mo­ti­vate their stu­dents to learn the lan­guage," she ex­plained.

Say­ing she has been teach­ing the Oral Con­ver­sa­tion Crash Course on­line for the past two years, Khan said 90 per cent of her stu­dents have re­ceived a Grade A for the speak­ing pro­file.

"They have giv­en pos­i­tive feed­back so I know this works. I hope that this book helps stu­dents to study and pre­pare for the ex­am be­cause prepa­ra­tion builds con­fi­dence and con­fi­dence leads to suc­cess," she said.

Khan ex­plained that her new text­book on­ly fo­cus­es on the oral con­ver­sa­tion ex­am.

"This is an ex­am stu­dents of­ten dread and feel anx­ious about. There are 250 ques­tions on the six top­ics that are test­ed, with mul­ti­ple pos­si­ble an­swers per ques­tion as well as the oth­er ways the ques­tions can be asked. It pro­vides a guide as to the ex­pect­ed stan­dard re­quired to ex­cel in the ex­am," she ex­plained.

Khan said her stu­dents of­ten told her there were no books ded­i­cat­ed to CSEC Span­ish oral con­ver­sa­tion.

"To my sur­prise up­on vis­it­ing book­stores, I did not find any. This mo­ti­vat­ed me to put my notes to­geth­er as a re­source that could ben­e­fit not just my stu­dents but all stu­dents," she added.

Khan said ac­cord­ing to CXC’s An­nu­al Re­port in 2021, 59 per cent of the 2021 Re­gion­al can­di­dates re­ceived Grades 1-3 com­pared to 65 per cent in 2019 and 70 per cent in 2018.

"The 2022 sta­tis­tics on Span­ish are not avail­able on the CXC web­site," she added.

Khan said stu­dents can over­come the chal­lenges of Covid, adding that there is more in­ter­est now in learn­ing Span­ish than ever be­fore.

"Span­ish is seen as a sec­ond lan­guage by both adults and stu­dents and their rea­sons are di­rect­ly linked to the need to be bilin­gual be­cause of the in­creased pres­ence of Venezue­lans in Trinidad," she said.

Khan added, "From my per­son­al ex­pe­ri­ence with my Span­ish on­line lessons with Forms 1-5, I have had quite a num­ber of re­quests over the last two years for on­line adult con­ver­sa­tion­al Span­ish class­es. Some were man­agers or em­ploy­ers who had Venezue­lan work­ers, or were busi­ness­men, a few doc­tors and oth­er adults who just want­ed to learn to speak the lan­guage."

While Khan does not teach adult class­es, Khan said she was de­ter­mined to help as many peo­ple with con­ver­sa­tion­al Span­ish, us­ing her book.

"I al­so hope to help stu­dents im­prove their grades and ex­cel in CSEC Span­ish by pro­vid­ing a so­lu­tion to one of the most chal­leng­ing lan­guage skills for stu­dents which is oral con­ver­sa­tion. I hope to pro­vide a much-need­ed re­source not on­ly for stu­dents but for Span­ish teach­ers as well," she added.

Khan said the new book will save time and pro­vide notes.

"Hav­ing the ques­tions and lots of an­swers loaded with an ex­ten­sive vo­cab­u­lary and var­ied gram­mar struc­tures, al­lows for more time to be spent on prac­tis­ing their speak­ing skills," she added.

The book is avail­able at lead­ing book­stores. Any­one want­i­ng a copy can What­sApp 792-2881 or check In­sta­gram: @pro­fe­faria or Face­book-Pro­fe­so­ra Faria Khan On­line Span­ish Lessons.