Helen Laurenson
The literature and film component of A-level Spanish offers a great deal of pleasure, both for the teacher involved and for the pupil who begins to experience a true sense of language in action and cultural context. However, the road to this cultural synergy is not without obstacles. Given the National Literary Trust’s 2024 findings that reading for pleasure amongst adolescents has fallen to a 20-year low, the task of teaching a canonical text in Spanish takes on even more significance.
The following points may be helpful when approaching Paper 2:
- Carefully consider the demographics of the class before you select the text or film and avoid the temptation to trot out the same cultural topic in a one-size fits all approach. The pupils are expert in sniffing out any teacher reliance on TES resources ‘death by power point’ approaches.
- Alternatively, during the Summer Term of the Lower Sixth, showcase a selection of texts to whet the pupils’ appetites, thus devolving agency to them in the eventual selection.
- Pre-empt your introduction of the primary text with shorter, more accessible texts in the TL: for example, if teaching La casa de Bernarda Alba, set a prose translation from Impresiones y paisajes or a stanza or two of La monja gitana from Romancero gitano. You could also prepare a (very) abridged version of an abstract from a secondary source article in Spanish which communicates key thematic ideas.
- Do try to read the entire text (or key sections of it) as a class. If possible, provide an electronic pdf version for ease of reference, with a search function for key words.
- Assignments should be graded for difficulty, starting with a chapter or scene analysis, moving from narration to close textual analysis. Ultimately, pupils should be able to ‘zoom out’ and consider the text as a whole and its impact on the reader.
- Set initial research tasks in the target language (exploring authorial biography or country profile, for example).
- Boost pupil confidence in Spanish by debating key issues in class, or setting presentations.
- Use primary and secondary source comments as a springboard for further discussion of themes.
- Use Google docs to assign specific topics for pupils to share on a class document (for example, one pupil to trace the textual incidences of the navaja in Bodas de sangre or weather descriptions in El coronel no tiene quien le escriba).
- Consider differentiated tasks – eg Oxbridge candidates may want to use JStor to research the influence of existentialism in Ernesto Sábato’s El túnel.
- Encourage pupils to consider drafting questions themselves, thus inculcating a sense of the importance of question analysis. You could also ask pupils to have a stab at indicative content.
- Set commentary questions, starting with targeted questions about an extract from the text. This can help reduce the pressure to memorise quotations.
- Use the terminology of higher order thinking skills explicitly, leading to confidence in both inference and critical thinking.
- Use Quizlet for dramatic, poetic or literary terminology definitions, insisting on the use of a given number of these terms as a marking focus in pupils’ written work.
- Harness cross-curricular skills – for example, a basic introduction to psychoanalytical literary theory may be of interest to Psychology students, or for History students, the historical context of Latin American dictatorships.
The better the students understand a work, the more likely they are to enjoy it. ¡Buen viaje!
Bulletin of Advanced Spanish 