The Language Teaching Assistant: an analysis

Abstract

[eng] Foreign languages still seem to be one of the biggest problems of nowadays’ Spanish education. Not only do we occupy a 6th position regarding the people that do not speak a second language in the EU, but also 56% of Spanish people only speak their mother tongue. Some attempts to improve this situation have been taken, such as the insertion of a native speaker of a foreign language in the classroom. Having said this, the main objective of this work is to describe and analyse the official documents which state the functions of the foreign language assistant, as well as studying real cases of FLAs and suggesting a proposal for the improvement of the role of this classroom resource. LTAs or FLs are in charge of carrying out linguistic and intercultural activities with a student-centered objective: making the most of their presence. Besides, they create real situations in the classroom with a subsequent obliged effort in understanding and expressing. In other words, the role of the LTA, should be to develop pupils’ spontaneous speaking skills; to ‘go beyond’ the basic requirements of the examination. To do this work, I have taken as a reference the official regulations about foreign language assistants and I have developed in the matter through the experience of real foreign language assistants. A questionnaire has been designed and sent to several language assistants that have worked (or still are) in Spain. Thanks to these real cases, a proper study and investigation of the program has been carried out. As a conclusion, some questions and doubts seem to stand out: Are we making the most of the presence of the FLA?