Teaching of Spanish in the young and adult people education

Abstract

This paper aims to reflect on the teaching of Spanish in high school classes of Young and Adult People Education. The theoretical framework is based on documents of federal agencies and on works about the YAPE functions, its students’ profile, the role of the teachers, the teaching of a foreign language and, in special, the teaching of Spanish. It is defended that problems such as the inadequacy of materials and of the approaches, that hinder the deconstruction of negative beliefs of YAPE students in learning a foreign language, are aggravated by the fact that these students come to school, in general, unsure about their ability to master new formal knowledge. In addition to the theoretical data, some pedagogical experiences of one of the authors of this study, as a Spanish teacher, in  high school YAPE classes, where the contextualization of activities and the dialogue with students were preponderant factors for the implementation of a quality teaching-learning process, are related. Finally, based on the reflection about the results achieved with the reported activities, this study tries to prove the importance of teaching Spanish to increase not only the knowledge and self-esteem of young and adult learners, but also their social inclusion.