Fifth/sixth year Spanish

linguist

I will be teaching fifth year higher level Spanish this autumn for the first time in several years and my first time in my current school. I would really appreciate the thoughts of colleagues with regard to the approach to take.

I know colleagues, including in my school, who basically go very heavy on grammar, sentence translation and rote learning of vocabulary especially in fifth year. The rationale behind this is the format of the exam in Spanish. My 'main' subject is French and I am used to teaching in a much more communicative manner towards what is arguably a less well structured but more holistic exam.

Personally, my preferred way to approach teaching higher level Spanish would be pretty similar to French: take the course in thematic blocks (oneself, family, locality, school, hobbies all the way up to the more 'abstract' topics) and seek to incorporate the four skills into lessons insofar as possible. From reading the syllabus and some inspection reports, I get the impression that this is what is intended. I realise that there is a lot of grammar to get through but I believe in spreading that evenly over the two years as opposed to cramming it hugely into fifth year and leaving a lot of vocab, oral and listening for sixth year as I am aware some teachers do.

So I would enormously welcome advice and thoughts. I know that there is a tendency among teachers to say 'do your own thing' but the reality is that students and parents will have expectations based on what other teachers might do and I would just like to have a picture of what is done as broadly as I can. Many thanks!