SPANISH FOR SPECIFIC PURPOSES: PAST, PRESENT AND FUTURE

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 people and goods, the reality will be that citizens “professional competences” will occupy an important place. In this sense, the “approximation” of training systems and the “correspondence” of professional qualifications are generally considered as indispensable for the free circulation of workers.

I would like to bring to attention the fact that these thoughts were expressed a long time before we reached the current level of economic and professional integration that Europe now enjoys.

Indeed, the current European and international context places the teaching of languages in a new scenery: the aim of developing a professional activity in a language other than your mother tongue.

This circumstance, common in many countries of Central Europe, is particularly new to the European countries of Mediterranean culture, who were used to  only tourism and hospitality professional being obliged to use more than one language in their workplace.

Given all this, the learning/teaching of Spanish as a foreign language also takes on a new dimension. Beyond the usual clichés who made us imagine the student of Spanish as a tourist with linguistic curiosity, the current profile of Spanish students has been considerably modified. Nowadays students know their learning objectives and, in a high percentage of cases, have the intention of using Spanish for work purposes.

Due to everything we have said, it is obvious that the offer of teaching of Spanish for Specific Purposes arises from a more or less intense demand from students of Spanish who have already undertaken initial studies to gain the sufficient knowledge base to approach specific registers and terminology.

The first approximations to Spanish for Tourism were followed, albeit timidly, by Spanish for Busines –initially and not very accurately referred to as Commercial Spanish- and Spanish for the Health Professions. More recently, some people, such as myself, observed a demand for learning Spanish for administration and, more specifically, for the legal world. This demand needed to satisfy the interest of professionals from several sectors – be it from public bodies and institutions or private businesses-  and different geographical origins, both in Europe and in other continents.

The way in which the teaching of Spanish for Specific Purposes needs to be approached deserves separate consideration. Even if a language as a communication system is not divisible, we can take into account that Spanish for Specific purposes will at least consist of a specific lexicon and frequently used expressions within a particular register. But learning Spanish for Specific Purposes does not only entail acquiring vocabulary and grammatical structures, but it must also develop cultural competence, vitally important for the correct understanding of content, in students.

We are at a crossroads in which the teaching of languages is no longer auto-complacent due to the incessant interchange among professionals of several nationalities and from different sectors of the economic activity, in many cases in search of new markets due to the economic crisis. Spanish, the third most widely spoken language in the planet, could not remain indifferent to this restructuring of language teaching. But the new way has hardly been plotted. We now need to walk through it by setting concrete aims and objectives. Us teachers, due to our privileged position, are responsible to meet the needs of our students after familiarising ourselves with their interests and worries. This responsibility should not be a burden, but, on the contrary, it should serve as an incentive and renew our motivation in the construction of new ways of teaching –and of learning- the Spanish language.

If nowadays someone asked me about the teaching of Spanish for Professional Purposes, my answer would be different to the one I gave in Naples over a decade ago: Spanish for Specific Purposes is no longer the future, it has become our present.

José María Alonso Martín is a lawyer and coordinator of the Spanish for the Legal Profession Course offered by  Cervantes E.I.

1CEDEFOP, Les professions du secteur tourisme-hôtellerie dans la Communauté. Une analyse comparée, Répertoire communautaire des profils professionnels, Luxembourg, Office des publications officielles des Communautées européennes, 1991.