Description

“Spanish in the community and volunteering” is a program of service-learning and volunteering activities in the community.

This complementary program aims at bringing learning outside the classroom. Students in this program will be able to find opportunities to use Spanish while speaking with people, and while living and working within the community.

With this program, we help students be in touch with the community and we guarantee their participation in a wide variety of situations. Through the “Spanish in the community and volunteering” program, students can complement Spanish courses with immersion experiences as well as social, sports, cultural, environmental and volunteering activities, depending on the season and the schedule of the courses, also in the weekends.

In all these activities students participate as observers and carry out cultural research supervised by a tutor of CIAM team.

Recipients

Spanish learners of all levels (A1-C1) and aged 18 or over, who attend general Spanish courses at CIAM (general intensive Spanish course, A1-C1 or DELE preparation course) who want to complement their learning through an immersion or volunteering experience in the life of the community.

Elements of the program

It includes:

In terms of education and training:

• Personalized immersion program in the community or in volunteering. It lasts between 15 and 20 hours a week for two weeks, depending on the activity chosen, which is selected by the student with the help of a tutor and based on a questionnaire and a personalized interview via videoconference before the beginning of the program.
• With the help of a tutor, students define their areas of interest according to their academic or professional education and interests, the duration of the program, and the days in which they prefer to do the activities chosen.
• Personalized monitoring by a tutor (two or three days a week with a previously agreed schedule), from whom students will receive guidance on the tasks to be carried out during the program (interviews, surveys, video recordings, learning diaries, etc.) and with whom they will share the results of their ethnographic research in the community.
• On the last day, students will present the results of their homework to the tutor or in class (orally and with a written dossier).
• The entire process, the students’ project and attitude towards learning will be evaluated.

The different elements of the course are distributed as follows:

Spanish in the community

The language of leisure

• Spanish in the city’s festivities (Fiestas de San Juan): The last week of June, before the first summer course, students can enjoy the most important festival in Soria, which is renowned all across the country.
• Spanish in the municipal band: Students have the possibility to rehearse and eventually play with the Soria Music Band. It is an immersive sound experience.
• Spanish in sports: Students can be part of a team, depending on their interests. They can choose between soccer, basketball and other team sports. Team work prepares for future professional life. Almost everything in life involves working in a group.

The language of the media

• Spanish and the radio: Students attend live local and national radio broadcasts. They can even participate!
• Spanish and television: Students attend the recordings of local programs. They are behind the scenes in the recording studios, interviewing reporters and program hosts.
• Spanish and the press: Students spend time with local journalists in their daily work. They can also work as journalists themselves or reporters of their country in Soria while practicing and improving their Spanish.
• Spanish and web design: Students witness and learn from the work of a digital designer, who is a technological artist.

The language of jobs

• Spanish with a rural doctor: Students have the chance to put themselves in a health worker’s shoes in their daily work, while learning about our health system and empathizing with the patients of rural areas.
• Spanish in the Museo Numatino and its excavations (archeology): Becoming an archaeologist for a few weeks is a cultural and anthropological journey that students love.
• Spanish in education: During the fall, winter and spring, students can be with a teacher or a professor during classes and participate, for example, during English classes. In the summer, students can participate in activities and camps with children, where they will be able to do micro-teaching sessions.
• Spanish in the local administration: Students also have the opportunity to observe the work of technicians in local environmental programs and heritage restoration projects, among others.
• Spanish and its legal language: Students will be able to closely follow the work of a lawyer.

The rural Spanish

• Spanish with a forest ranger: Students can observe the daily work of a forest ranger in order to explore the Spanish language as they explore the forests of the area.
• Spanish at a ranch: Students might choose to be with a rancher while he does his job. They will learn about life cycles through Spanish.
• Spanish with a rural veterinarian: Students can be with a veterinarian in his daily work in the rural environment. It will fill their hearts!
• Spanish in the natural parks: This involves accompanying, in their daily work, an engineer responsible for the natural parks of the area: the Parque del Cañón del Río Lobos and La Fuentona, among others. A landscape that will remain with them forever.
• Spanish and alternative energy sources: Students might want to go with technicians to wind or solar parks and learn about their job. It will help them breathe and learn about green energy in our community.

Spanish in volunteering

• Programs with the Red Cross: It involves programs to help minors, women, drug addicts…
• Programs with NGOs. Students can participate in community development programs with the NGO Cives Mundi.
• Spanish in a nursing home: Students spend time with the elderly and practice Spanish at the same time.

Methodology

• Experiential Learning: This program embraces John Dewey’s maxim of “learning by doing” as the best way to learn. Experiential learning is the process of learning through experience. Students learn by doing and reflecting on the experience in which they are involved. That is why tutoring is so important in this program.
• Task-Based Learning: CIAM designs the tasks to be carried out by students, which are linked to different scenarios in which they must get along.
• Students learn to learn: by working on tasks, students look for strategies to solve problems.
• Motivation: there is no learning without emotion. These experiences activate all the sensory perception channels (visual, auditory, tactile, kinesthetic, etc.) of the students.
• Attention and openness to curiosity in order to learn. Francisco Mora Teruel, a Neuroeducation expert, says that we can only learn what we love.

Price

Spanish in the community and volunteering	Duration	Price
30 hours	2 weeks	250 €
45 hours	3 weeks	350 €
60 hours	4 weeks	450 €
75 hours	5 weeks	550 €

Certificate

At the end of the program students will receive a certificate of attendance that will state the number of hours of training and participation in the activities and tasks of the program.

Enrollment

Registration is applied for online through our website, and payments are made with a credit or debit card through a transfer.

Important info

These programs have to be combined with those of the other courses that students choose. Some of the program activities are only available for students over 18 years of age.