Spanish teachers in the Middle East catch up in Cairo

Spanish teachers in the Middle East catch up in Cairo



Coming from countries with wars and economic problems, more than 250 teachers of Spanish as a Foreign Language (ELE) from 16 countries in the Middle East gather today and for the first time in Cairo to update teaching methods and share experiences.

Throughout this weekend, teachers will attend lectures and discussion tables on the teaching of Spanish and the "new teaching methodologies" in the first Congress of Spanish as a Foreign Language in the Middle East (CELEOM) organized by the Cervantes Institute from Cairo along with those of Amman and Beirut.

"We want teachers to interact and share the learning methods they use and to define what the challenges are," Silvia Rodríguez, director of the Instituto Cervantes in Cairo, told Efe.

Also behind the congress is the goal of "creating a community" of Spanish language teachers, he added.

The teaching of Spanish has particularities but it also shares problems similar to those of other parts of the world, the academic director of the Cervantes Institute, Richard Bueno, told Efe.

"The challenges in the Middle East are very similar to other parts of the world because there are developments that affect (all countries) equally," Bueno said.

How to teach the language of Cervantes in countries in conflict is one of the points that are discussed throughout the weekend at CELEOM.

"As a result of the war, there are no media in Iraq, it is great to have such a meeting to be able to make contact with other teachers" and "to share new methodological tools," thanked Professor Abeer Hussein Abid, an ELE professor at the University of Baghdad.

"The situation (of teaching Spanish) has gone down because of the war, now we only have 23 students and a Spanish department in Iraq," Hussein lamented in a statement to Efe.

The meeting, which has a focus on new teaching techniques, includes around twenty papers ranging from new learning tools to the interculturality of a language that is currently spoken by 450 million people and seduces more than 35 million people. foreign students, according to the Cervantes Institute.

"In Iraq, teachers are fighting alone to promote Spanish, since we do not have support from the government or the institutions because of the war," the Iraqi professor tells Efe.

However, he assured that Spanish opens many doors to young Iraqis, since "many students now work as interpreters for Spanish troops".

Among the countries in which Spanish is booming are Algeria and Ethiopia, which have more than five centers and universities dedicated to teaching the language and about a hundred students of ELE.

For Berdania Mebarka, professor at the Algerian University of Amar Télidji, this boom is due to the fact that Spanish "has many professional opportunities and Spanish companies pay very well".

In Ethiopia, the number of ELE students "has increased from 28 to 97 in just two years," said Roser Noguera, a professor at the International Community School in the Ethiopian capital.

In the case of this last country, there is the peculiarity of the Ethiopian community that studied in Cuba, which according to Noguera is about 3,500 people, and which has caused an "exponential increase" of ELE students.

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