Essential skills, attitudes and values
The essential skills
Language study contributes significantly to developing the eight essential skills outlined in The New Zealand Curriculum Framework.
Communication skills are the foundation for language learning. Other essential skills are practised and extended as an integral part of the language programme.
Information skills are developed as students organise and analyse information, interpret different points of view, and distinguish fact from opinion.
Students develop their problem-solving skills when they make connections and establish relationships, both within the Spanish language, and between Spanish and their first language.
They develop their self-management skills and competitive skills through activities that encourage them to take responsibility for their own learning, and through taking up opportunities to monitor their own progress and better their own achievements over time.
For effective language learning and successful communication, students need to develop social and co-operative skills. The pair and group activities that are fundamental to modern language learning are based on the development of these skills. Furthermore, language learning involves a type and quality of social and cultural awareness that is likely to have a marked, positive effect on students' social interactions.
Students' work and study skills can be developed and reinforced through activities that encourage self-motivated and self-directed learning, and through an emphasis on their developing ability to record and monitor their own learning.
Numeracy skills are enhanced as students learn to manipulate Spanish in mathematical contexts, including by telling the time, discussing dates, and using measurements.
Physical skills are also used in language learning. Students learn best when all their senses are involved, so several of the learning tasks suggested in these guidelines involve drama and other physical activities.
Attitudes and values
The attitudes and values outlined in The New Zealand Curriculum Framework will be reflected in the Spanish-language classroom.
As part of the overall school curriculum, the Spanish curriculum will help students to develop and clarify their own values and beliefs, and to respect and be sensitive to the rights of people whose values and beliefs differ from their own.
As they compare their own values and attitudes with those of Spanish-speaking people and their societies, students will develop greater understanding of their own attitudes and values.
Personal as well as collective attitudes will be explored, which will help individual students to develop positive attitudes towards learning as a life-long process.