MUNDO CELTA
JAS
STAFF MEMBER STARTS SPANISH INSTITUTE IN DUBLIN
By David Giles
A Trinity Foreign Language Assintant, Senor José Antonio Sierra, has started a centre in Dublin for the promotion of cultural and educational relations between Ireland and Spain. The centre has received the support of various Spanish Government departments, the Irish Department of Education, teachers of Spanish in Ireland, the universities and many other bodies. Antonio Sierra hopes that his "Centro Espanol" will be the nucleus of a Spanish Institute comparable to the French,
German and Italian Institutes already in Dublin.
Senor Sierra has already organised three language courses. Two are in Spanish-a crash course for third-level students and school teachers. The third is a course in English for Spanish au-pair girls in Dublin to qualify them to teach English when they return to Spain. These girls often come from poor families, but now they will have a professional qualification they would not have gained under the Spanish educational system. The accent of the courses is on value for money and in addition, exchanges of teachers and students are being arranged between Ireland and Senor Sierra´s home in Avila and Castile.
Although currently housed in temporary accommodation, the centre contains a collection of up-to-date catalogues of Spanish publications and a reference library of books on the language, literature, culture, socio-economic and political affairs of Spain and Latin America. It is alrady being used as an information centre by the travel trade and journalists.
It may be surprising to learn that Spanish is the second most popular language in Irish schools. Senor Sierra says that the 12.000 students of Spanish in Ireland must benefit by the services offered by the institute. The growth of interest in Spanish here is reciprocated by the recent introduction of English into Spanish secondary schools on a nation-wide scale.
Antonio Sierra hopes to be able to raise the standard of English in Spain and the standard of Spanish here by particularly concentrating on the teachers and potential teachers of the two languages. He has also proposed an exchange scheme between the children of workers and farmers of Spain and Ireland for the benefit of the children and the tightening of bonds between the people of both contries.
TRINITY NEWS
April 23, 1970
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