This past 31 st of March the Spanish Course for the Legal Profession taught by Cervantes Escuela Internacional was officially presented in Brussels. This presentation was part of the calendar of activities that Cervantes Escuela Internacional has organised with the occasion of its 25 th Anniversary, within which we would also like to mention the meeting with the Professional Training Unit of the Court of Justice of the European Union in Luxembourg. Many people attended the presentation took place in the offices of EXTENDA (Trade Promotion Agency of Andalusia), lawyers from several legal practices with offices in Brussels, personnel form different European Union institutions and students of law in their final years of university. The event was introduced by Alexandra Mateo Bré, Extenda´s Market Analyst at the Trade Promotion Office in Benelux . Ms. Mateo introduced Cervantes Escuela Internacional and stressed the importance or learning Spanish as a foreign language as an excellen

On the occasion of my attendance to a Communitarian Law seminar at the University if Naples during my experience as a teacher in Italy at the end of the 90’s, I started to ask about the true dimension of Spanish for Specific Purposes, questioning even the usefulness of even considering the teaching of languages for specific purposes. My answer back then was categorical: the teaching of languages for specific purposes is the future. Soon, nobody will learn a language without knowing what they really need it for. The European Centre for the Development of Vocational Training for the for the Council of European Communities published an interesting study about the training of languages in the studies of the tourism professionals in 1991. 1 Among the most important and deep reflections present in the aforementioned study, I have chosen a quote which relates to my answer at the University of Naples : If tomorrow’s Europe is going to become a “big marketplace” open to the circulation of

This last April, Cervantes Escuela Internacional had the pleasure to attend to the   IV International Congreso of the Faculty of Philology of the University of Santiago de Compostela (Galicia)   with the title: La enseñanza del español en un mundo intercultural. Jornadas pedagógicas. (The Teaching of Spanish in the Intercultural World. Pedagogical Workshops) We had the opportunity to teach a workshop entitled: RENOVANDO LA CLASE DE ELE: LA INTERCULTURALIDAD EN EL AULA (RENEWING THE SFL LESSON: INTERCULTURALITY IN THE CLASSROOM). This workshop aimed to show teachers that linguistic competence alone is not enough to speak a language. Good language teaching must give a prominent role to the cultural component as an indispensable element in communicative competence. Riley makes some reflections on what Culture is: KNOW THAT political or religious knowledge, education, geography, history… of a given society (CULTURE in capitals) KNOW OF the events, phenomenons and worries of that soc