More teachers to train in teaching Spanish

MANILA, Philippines - More public high school teachers are set to undergo training in teaching the Spanish language after the Department of Education (DepEd) tapped the help of the government of Spain in its special program in foreign language (SPFL).

The seminars, which will run from April to November this year, will be conducted in Manila, Cebu and Granada in Spain.

This year, 35 additional teachers will be trained in basic Spanish. Of the number, 26 are from schools selected for the program while nine are from pilot schools considered as Centers of Excellence.

“We welcome these enhancement activities as this will strengthen the capability of our teachers and prime them for globalization,” DepEd Secretary Armin Luistro said.


The SPFL aims to develop students’ skills in listening, speaking, reading and writing to achieve communicative competence in a second language.

The SPFL was piloted in selected public secondary schools during school year 2009-2010 with Spanish, French and Japanese. German was added in 2010-2011.

The SPFL-Spanish is jointly implemented by DepEd, Spain’s Ministry of Education, Instituto Cervantes Manila and the Spanish Agency for International Cooperation and Development.

The summer training course will conclude on May 25 at the Instituto Cervantes Manila. Immersion program will be in July to August either in Salamanca or Granada, both in Spain.

DepEd has also renewed its partnership with the Summer Institute of Linguistics (SIL) for the preservation of Philippine dialects.

“Of the 170 plus languages we have, several are considered endangered. Together with SIL we will try to save them,” Luistro said.

 He said the partnership with SIL helps preserve indigenous Philippine languages in danger of extinction. Luistro said 24 local dialects are “dying” while four were already extinct.

The institute also helps DepEd implement the Mother Tongue-Based Multilingual Education (MTB-MLE) which was started last school year.

“Primary education using the mother tongue helps the process of learning by introducing concepts to students in the language they are most used to,” he said.

DepEd is planning to add six more dialects to the MTB-MLE program including Ibanag and Ivatan.