Thinly spread

I have been trying to think of a post for a few days and I couldn't. The rest is just space filler.

My bosses at work asked me if I could design a course for people working in "hosteleria" and I said of course. I nearly always say of course unless they ask me if I want to work with biting and dancing on the table aged children. I knew exactly what they meant with hosteleria, waiters and bar staff and suchlike. I see that the dictionary definition says hotel trade. It's quite odd how much difference there is at times between what Spanish people say and what books and dictionaries and text books say they say.

The book I'm currently reading is Los ritos del agua. As I read any book, particularly if it's in Spanish, I have to look up a fair few words. One of the great advantages of reading on an electronic book is that it has a built in dictionary so I can find key words without interrupting the flow too much. Anyway I came across a word, vahído, which the dictionary says means blackout or funny turn. I could see a use for that word given my personal history so I tried to remember it. I've been here a while now though and I know that it's wise to check with a few Spaniards whether a word is in everyday use before I try to use it in an everyday way. Lots of words are dictionary correct but hardly ever get an outing. Over the years I've struggled to learn several words that I thought would be dead useful - imbornal, escotilla, injerencias and ciclotímico spring to mind - only to find that they are double Dutch to most Spanish people. Nobody seems to use vahído.

Anyway, back to waiters and an English language course. So I asked my bosses if they could find a suitable book for me to lean on whilst I set about doing the basic course outline. As I trawled the Internet I was surprised how much stuff I found, in English, particularly worksheets and vocabulary lists, that I would disagree with. I know it's "better", at least it was better when I was at school in the 1950s and 1960s, to say "May I go to the toilet?" or "May I have more bread, please?" than to say "Can or Could I" but I think it's disservice to teach people "May I" in the 21st Century.

Then I got around to some of the things I would tell the Spanish food and drink people about the sort of things that I thought Britons living in or visiting Pinoso would like to see. One of the first was maybe to use British instead of English. Now I know that Scots like to be Scottish and the Welsh like to be Welsh but I think it may be asking a bit too much to expect a Spanish server to spot the difference between a Maesteg and a Renfrew accent.

Then I thought about information. About how we Britons tend to like things written down. Menus with prices, lists of snacks and the varieties of sandwich. Opening hours and a sample menu, to gauge the price as well as the range, outside the door. Things like that.

Next up were some of the things we do that are a bit out of the ordinary for Spaniards. Butter on bread and nowadays oil too, vinegar on chips, pepper alongside the salt. Drinking hot drinks like tea and coffee with hot food. Not thinking of vegetarianism or even veganism as something odd. Liking your food to be your food rather than having, for instance, communal starters in the middle of the table.

And I wondered about the confusion at times over simple words like eat and drink. Comer is Spanish for to eat but it also means to lunch. Ages ago, when we lived in Ciudad Rodrigo I often used to be in a bar, between classes, at around 4pm in the afternoon. Maybe a little late for lunch in a small Spanish town. It was common for a Briton, or a French person, to approach the bar and ask one of the waiters who looked after the tables in the street, on the terrace, if there was anything to "comer". The servers would say no and turn them away but I knew that inside there were lots of cold foods, tapas, sandwiches and the like that were just what the travellers were hoping for "to fill a gap." A simple misunderstanding. And we understand drink too. "Do you want a drink?" - as someone enters your house means tea or coffee, "Do you want a drink?" - as you talk about what to do in the evening means alcohol. Tricky.

So, to be honest, with a bit of food vocabulary, a bunch of stock phrases, lots of role plays and a bit on our idiosyncrasies I think that building a fifteen hour course will be pretty straightforward.

Colloquial contractions, prepositions and phrasal verbs

When I was at university, a lifetime ago, I was asked how much say I thought students should have in the learning programme. My answer, then, was almost none. Nobody had yet persuaded me that participation was the way to go. Nobody had then persuaded me that it was the learning that was important.

It used to be that language teaching, English language teaching, in Spain was pretty straightforward. The teacher started with page one, went on to page two and so on. There was a lot of writing and copying and not much talking or listening. I'm sure it's no longer like that.

Having been brought up in another country it never struck me to teach in that traditional Spanish way. Even when we have a course book I tend to drift off the straight and narrow. I try to talk them through grammar. I don't think that a grammatical rule with one line of explanation followed by a page of exceptions is going to be very helpful to someone who has to juggle with vocabulary, structures, idioms, grammar, rhythm and pronunciation as they try to get something to eat in a café.

The other night I was having a bit of a discussion in a bar with someone who is doing an English course at the Official School of Languages. She had been told that unless she demonstrated her ability to use certain constructions, we talked about inversions, things like, "Not until I heard my name did I believe I had won the race" or "Hardly had I begun to speak when I was interrupted" would she be able to demonstrate that she had achieved a B2 level. What the B2 descriptor, of the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages, actually says is that someone at this level can understand the main ideas of complex text on both concrete and abstract topics, including technical discussions in their field of specialisation, can interact with a degree of fluency and spontaneity that makes regular interaction with native speakers possible without strain for either party and can produce clear, detailed text on a wide range of subjects and explain a viewpoint on a topical issue giving the advantages and disadvantages of various options.

Not much mention there of inversion. Obviously the text books have to try to build more complicated language into their various levels but the truth is that the CEFR is all about communication and not about grammar - the grammar is there to describe how the communication works. I saw a direct parallel between trudging through a text book as a way to teach English and a modern day student being told that the level of effectiveness in speaking English is in the complexity of the language.

At one of the places I work my boss said that a student had complained that we spent all the time talking and listening and reading stuff and suchlike in class and that what we should be doing was doing more exam papers, more filling in the gaps in grammar exercises. The complainer thought I should, certainly, be setting more homework rather than urging people to check those things they found difficult, to read things in English to help with structure and form and to consult grammar books to help them work out how to say the things they wanted to say or write.

Page one it is then.