Interculturalidad y sensibilización de género en las clases de español: el caso de la Malinche

Abstract

The International Bachalaureate is a program which has been developed especially for international schools. The IB has its own curriculum which is different from that of the Dutch education system. Despite the fact that the intercultural component plays an important role within the curriculum of the International Bachalaureate, the history of Latin America is not very present. There is not a big role within the curriculum for the sensitization of gender equality either, although both things are very important for the development of the students as global citizens. At the start of the investigation for this thesis, five Spanish course books, used for teaching Spanish within the International Bachalaureate program, were examined to find out whether they pay any attention to these topics. The results showed that these course books spend little attention to the history of Latin America and not any to the sensitization of gender equality. That is why the topic of this thesis is the design, implementation and evaluation of a lesson series , developed especially for the diploma program of the International Bachalaureate, about the image of La Malinche. Within the theme of cultural diversity, La Malinche and the conquest of Mexico are used for teaching the Spanish language. We also use La Malinche to study the topic of the position of women throughout the centuries. We use the inductive grammar method which allows students to discover rules about the language while using and learning the language themselves, instead of the instructor explaining the rules to them. Not only is this the most natural way, it is also the best way to remember the rules. This unit consists of five lessons from about two hours each. The five lessons are made both in Power point and in PDF format. The series comes with a teacher´s guide with explanations, aims and answers to the exercises. Each lesson also has historical information for the teachers. It also comes with a workbook for the students. The lessons were given to a pilot group from February until May 2017. An extra lesson, with the theme the position of women, was given by a Mexican student from the same school, using her experiences in Mexico. Before starting the lessons a test was given to the class to find out their levels and the same test, with slightly different questions, was given again after the project in order to see the differences. Evaluation interviews have been held with the students and the opinion of two other teachers about the project have been asked. The teacher´s guide has been revised with remarks from students, two other teachers and the experiences of the teacher herself. Good results were booked in the area of cultural diversity and sensitization of gender equality. They also learnt quite a lot of new vocabulary and how to use the expressions of comparison in the correct manner. Teaching the grammar however, namely the pretérito indefinido and the imperfecto, had been less successful. For future investigations it would be advisable to take more time teaching the grammar, especially the more complicated items.