Upper 6th Form Curriculum

A2 Spanish

Syllabus Followed: Edexcel

Over six million Britons visit Spain every year, so Britain’s link with Spain is significant. However, Spain is not the only country where Spanish is spoken; there are about 360 million speakers in the 21 countries in which Spanish is the official language, including most Latin American Republics. This makes Spanish the most widely spoken language after Mandarin Chinese. Indeed, over one third of the population of the USA now speaks Spanish.

Moreover, Spanish is one of the five official languages at the UN. Spain is currently Britain’s third most important trading partner. British executives and managers need to speak and understand Spanish in order to meet the challenges of this market and the enormous potential in Latin America, and they need to be informed about the culture of this vast and varied area in which English is seldom spoken (60% of British overseas trade is with non-English speaking countries). Having studied a foreign language at an Advanced Level will give you an advantage when applying for jobs. Spanish also combines well with many university degrees.

Studying Spanish to A2 level focuses particularly on honing the productive skills of spoken and written Spanish. This entails the extension of writing techniques (including a short translation into Spanish) and vocabulary-building. The language continues to be studied via further important cultural, political, social and economic topics of contemporary interest. Topics studied at AS Level are also revisited. Grammar is no longer taught as a discrete element, but only revised within the context of the spoken and written work, some of which is assessed as essays and coursework.

The key features of the A2 course are:

1. Three units, which are examined at the end of the Upper Sixth.
2. One unit is a choice between an oral presentation/discussion on a different theme from that of your AS Level oral (prepared with the Assistant and examined) and interpreting.
3. A second unit is coursework: this comprises one shorter piece of 500 words, to be completed by the end of the Autumn Term, and one longer piece of 1000 words, to be completed by the end of the Spring Term. The two pieces of work must be on different topics and must be about a Spanish speaking country.
4. A third unit of ‘mixed skills’, which examines listening, reading, translating, and one piece of writing in registers at the end of the Upper Sixth. The portion ‘writing in registers’ involves a journalistic option or a discursive essay or a task-based (i.e. business language) assignment.

Sixth Form Hispanists are expected to spend some time in Spain during their course and to attend conversation lesson with the Spanish Assistant. A range of study visits is available, as well as a well established work experience exchange programme with our partner school in Valencia, on Spain’s East coast.

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