1.Description of Organization

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Subjects: MA Internship

Organization: Proyecto Español University supervisor: Goffe James Internship supervisor: Erika Hernández

Final date internship: 15-05-2020 Final date hand in: 17-05-2020

Name student: Shen Jian Student number: S3572633 Course: Master Multilingualism

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Introduction

This an internship report about 3-mouth placement at the Proyecto Español. Proyecto Español is a language school specializing in teaching Spanish for foreigners. The placement started on February 10^th and ended on May 15^th.

The report is divided into three parts. The first part is a description of Proyecto Español. It will mainly focus on the Spanish department for foreigners, but also mention the English department and German department for Spanish people. The second part demonstrates main tasks I have devoted to, such as managing content for social media, organizing activities. The last part is an evaluation and analysis of what I did during the placement and what I have learned from this placement.

1.Description of Organization

Proyecto Idiomas is an educational institution for languages. It focuses on teaching Spanish to foreigners, but it also provides English and German courses to the local people, namely, Studio 3 and Instituto Berlin.

Proyecto Español

Proyecto Español was founded in 1998 in the city of Alicante with the aim of offering Spanish courses for foreigners. It achieved such success that in 2002 it opened a new school in

Granada. From the beginning, Proyecto Español has stood out for its great offer of courses and the quality. It receives around 1,500 students from more than 30 different countries per year.

The methodology is a complete immersion of Spanish language and culture during the stay.

Therefore, Proyecto Español provides varied extracurricular activities for foreigners to

experience the history, food and social life in Spain outside of the classroom (Proyecto Español, n.d.). Due to the coronavirus, the school has moved all courses online. Below is the information about these courses from school´s website (Proyecto, 2020).

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Figure 1 some coursess offered by the school (Proyecto, 2020)

Studio 3

Studio 3 is located in the center of Alicante. It specializes in teaching English as a foreign language to both individuals and companies for 30 years.

Its curricula are adapted to the guidelines established by the Council of Europe for language teaching. The English courses cover all aspects necessary for effective communication: reading and listening comprehension, oral and written expression. Studio 3 also organizes tailor-made courses with specific objectives (Studio 3, n.d.)..

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Instituto Berlín

Instituto Berlín has been offering German courses as a foreign language to individuals and companies since 1992. Instituto Berlin is a pioneering center specialized in the teaching of the German language in the Alicante region.

2.Student position and tasks

2.1 Assistant of English

My main task in the organization is to act as an English assistant in Studio 3, which includes organizing conversation club and conducting the extra help program.

Conversation Club is a series of conversation classes. The conversation club is for both adults and kids. Each conversation class has a specific topic according to the current English level of the students if they are adults, or their ages if they are kids. To successfully organize the conversation club, firstly, I have to decide the topic and make a detailed plan of all the

conversation classes for the next month. Secondly, I need to prepare the content and make the slides for each class, depending on the topic I have decided. Thirdly, I send emails through school’s system to my students to inform them of the date and the topic of the conversation class one week in advance. Meanwhile, I also need to reserve the classroom for my

conversation class. Last but not least, I give the conversation class by myself.

Extra help program is mainly for the kids. Its purpose is to help the kids who are performing poorly during the class by giving them one extra hour of exercise each week. The teachers will put some kids into extra help program if they think the kids have difficulties keeping up with the lessons. As the English assistant, it is also my duty to carry the extra help program. Same as the conversation club, I arrange the date of the extra help program, usually the afternoon of Monday or Tuesday. I receive the list of the kids who need to attend the extra help from the teachers, as well as the materials or exercises for each kid. When the kids come, I will hand out their materials and supervise the whole class. Extra help is not a one-hour exam, but a

consolidation of what they have been taught from their recent lessons. Therefore, whenever the kids have problems with the exercises or any words they do not understand, I approach them and explain the grammar or vocabulary. Sometimes, there are students who are very shy and do not ask any questions during the extra help, and they continue doing the exercises silently by themselves. However, they are not aware of the mistakes they have made in the exercises and repeating the mistakes all the time. Hence, it is especially important for me to check the exercises every time they finish one page. By doing so, I can correct their mistakes

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before the grammatical error is deeply implanted in their mind. After each extra help class, I need to note down the presence or absence and report it in the system.

2.2 Extracurricular Activities

A good language school is not only about theoretical lessons, but also about the immersion of the target languages. Therefore, Proyecto Español offers a lot of interesting activities for foreign students to practice Spanish in real life outside of classrooms. As an intern, it is a part of my responsibility to organize these activities. These activities include a trip to the museum in Alicante, a dancing class of Salsa, cooking class of Tortilla, watching Spanish movies, playing board games in Spanish, and dozens more! Of course, when it is dancing or cooking class, I am not the teacher. What I have to do is wait for students in the school, make sure all students signed up for the activity have arrived and then guide them to where the activity takes place.

For example, of all the extracurricular activities I have done, I like the dancing class most.

Because I had the chance to join the dancing class with the students!

The most popular activity of our school is the free language exchange once a week. I am completely in charge of the language exchange. It usually takes place from 18.15 to 20.00 on Wednesday or Thursday in the café of the school. Since our school is about Spanish, English, and German, people can practice all these three languages in the language exchange. Before each language exchange, I need to post the announcement of the date every Monday for people to sign up. During the language exchange, I need to pair the participants so that they can

practice the language with the native speaker of that language. I must keep the group size to 3 or 4 persons so that everyone in the group can have the opportunity to talk. Most of the time, I also join a group to lead the conversation with interesting topics.

2.3 Post for social media

Apart from organizing the conversation club, I also create content on social media for Studio 3. I design all the infographics to put on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter for the students of Studio 3 to learn more about the English language as well as the cultures of English-speaking countries. Therefore, the topics of these posts can be the differences between British and

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American English, common English mistakes made by Spanish speakers, famous English quotes, etc.

2.4 Translations

With the increasing number of Chinese students in Spain, we are trying to attract more Chinese students to study Spanish in Proyecto Español. To achieve this goal, it is essential to translate the information about our school into Chinese. Therefore, I have been assigned with some translation work. The first article is about the process of how to apply for a study visa in Spain for Chinese students. Because unlike European foreign students, Chinese students have more problems and difficulties in studying in Spain. For this reason, the translated article explicitly explains what our school will do and what the students must do in order to successfully get the study visa, so it is a great help for Chinese who stay abroad for the first time. The second article is an advertainment of our school, telling the potential students why they should come to our school to study Spanish.

Figure 2 an example of the infographics

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3.Evaluation

3.1 Master program and internship alignment

This internship and the lessons I have learned from my Master program are very complementary. For example, language policy course showed me a more top-to-down linguistic situation; on the other side, multilingual education course taught me enough theoretical knowledge for language teaching. One common problem of the courses in the

classroom is that they are overgeneralized and not practical. Therefore, this internship in a real language school provides me with additional experiences and knowledge of work as a

professional language teacher.

3.2 Personal growth

I have learned a lot from this internship. Firstly, doing this internship has certainly improved my Spanish. In the office, I speak Spanish with my colleagues every day. In the class, I need to speak Spanish from time to time because I give English conversation classes to local Spanish people. Besides the oral expression, my writing ability is also improved since I need to write formal emails to communicate with the students.

Secondly, I have completed tasks that I have never worked before, namely, marketing tasks on social media and even a real-life marketing event. I think it is a brand new experience for me to do the work of marketing. It gives me the opportunity to see how a real language school

operates, which requires not only excellent teachers but also the cooperation between

different departments. The work of marketing departments is as same essential as the quality of teachers if a language school wants to succeed.

Thirdly, even though the articles I have translated were not complicated and long, it is a good tryout for me to do the translation of Spanish and Chinese. Maybe I will not be a language teacher in the future, and this internship has inspired me another option of my future career.

Of course, I realize that where I should make improvements to be a better teacher. During the conversation class, I often find difficulty attracting young students´ attention. For better teaching efficiency, I need to make the slides or the content more entertaining. If I will be a teacher for kids, I will remind myself that it is important to deliver the information and knowledge in an interesting way.

Lastly, I think an internship is not only about hard work and learning all the time; sometimes one can have fun and enjoy the internship. Such as the dancing class activity I have attended or the conversation with kids who are only five years old. Even though the kids probably could not memorize the new vocabulary, we all had a good time in the conversation class. It is a fond memory during the internship for me.

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Conclusion

Over the past fourteen weeks, I have been working mostly as an English assistant, but also sometimes assistant for the marketing department. I have successfully completed the tasks on time during the internship. This internship has prepared me for my future career with

practical experience that I cannot acquire from everyday lectures. I learned how to modify the work under extreme situations. The situation of this year has made my internship extremely difficult due to the corona virus. Thankfully, I managed to work online, and I have organized some conversation classes on Zoom. There were a lot of challenges during the internship, not only professional ones but also challenges of personal health. Therefore, I am grateful to my supervisors from the university and the organization. They have given me a lot of help during this hard time.

In my opinion, the corona virus is a double-edged sword for my internship. It has caused many problems, but it also made the internship more worthy and memorable.

Reference

Proyecto Español. (2020). Cursos de español en directo en línea. Retrieved from https://proyecto- es.com/es/live-online-spanish-courses#general-courses

Proyecto Español. (n.d.). Who are we? Retrieved from https://proyecto-es.com/en/proyecto- espanol

Studio 3. (n.d.). Studio 3, tu academia de inglés en Alicante. Retrieved from https://studio3alicante.es/quienes-somos/

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Appendix I: Example of Translation Assignment

Visado

Te ayudamos con el visado de estudios para España:

Nuestra escuela está acreditada por el Instituto Cervantes, por ello normalmente nuestros estudiantes no tienen ningún problema para conseguir el visado de estudios necesario para el tiempo que dure su curso en nuestra escuela de español.

Es importante que antes de hacer la inscripción consultéis en la Embajada o Consulado de España las condiciones generales para los visados de estudiantes para España, puesto que puede cambiar un poco dependiendo del consulado y la situación política actual.

Por lo general una vez estás seguro que cumples con los requisitos personales que el gobierno de España solicita para los visados, el procedimiento es el siguiente:

1. Te registras a través de la inscripción online de nuestra web: https://www.proyecto-es.com/en/online- registration (por favor, recuerda completar todos los campos e indicarnos tu pasaporte en el espacio reservado para comentarios)

2. En menos de 2 días hábiles te contestamos enviándote la carta de confirmación de tu curso y los datos necesarios para que hagas el pago del curso contratado o parte de este.

3. Haces el pago correspondiente.

4. En cuanto recibimos el dinero te contestamos enviándote la Carta de invitación y la Carta de confirmación del pago recibido por email y al mismo tiempo por correo postal.

5. Con esos 3 documentos (Carta de confirmación, Carta de invitación y Carta de confirmación de recepción del pago) y el resto de documentación personal que te pida el consulado ya puedes pedir cita en el consulado para la tramitación del visado de estudiante.

Consideraciones

El estudiante es responsable de consultar los requisitos de visado para entrar a España en su embajada correspondiente. En caso de que el estudiante necesite los documentos originales los gastos de mensajería

correrían a cargo del estudiante. En caso de no obtener el visado, el estudiante tendrá que enviar la carta original de denegación de visado para proceder a la devolución del importe del programa que hubiese pagado. Se podrá modificar la fecha de inicio de curso si no se ha recibido una resolución del visado y siempre que se informe por mail a info@proyecto-es.com. Una vez obtenido el visado para estudiar un curso en PROYECTO ESPAÑOL no se aceptarán cancelaciones, modificaciones ni reducciones horarias. En ningún caso se devolverá la tasa de

inscripción de 60 EUR.

La normativa oficial de visados, fraude y políticas de cancelación de terceros nos obliga a ejercer nuestra política de cancelación estrictamente. Para evitar pérdidas financieras recomendamos contratar un seguro de viaje que cubre penalizaciones de cancelación.

Para cualquier información adicional que necesites no dudes en ponerte en contacto con nosotros.

https://proyecto-es.com/es/recursos/visado

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签证

我们会协助您取得西班牙学习签证：

本校是经塞万提斯学院认证的语言学校。因此，我们的学生在为来本校就读语言课程而申请学习签证时不会遇到任何困难。

请注意！因申请学习签证的一般要求可能因所属领事馆或当前政治局势而略有不同，请在报名本校语言课程前，务必咨询所在地区的西班牙领事馆。

在确认您的个人条件满足申请西班牙签证的基本要求后，请

1. 通过https://www.proyecto-es.com/en/online-registration 网站完成课程报名（请完整填写报名表并且在报名表第三页的评论区内填写您的护照信息）

2. 在两个工作日内，我们会与您取得联系，并给您发送课程的确认信以及支付全部或部分课程费用所需要的信息。

3. 完成相应费用的支付

4. 一旦我们收到相应款项，我们会立即通过电子邮件（如有需要，邮递）发送邀请函和收款确认信。

5. 携带上述三个材料（报名确认信，邀请函和收款确认信）以及您的个人材料可以向领事馆预约办理学习签证。

注意事项：

学生有责任向其所属西班牙领事馆咨询签证要求。如学生需要部分材料的原始件，其邮递费用将有学生承担。如未能获得签证，该学生需提供拒签信原件以申请退回已付费用。如在课程预定开始日期前

仍未得知签证申请结果，学生可以通过发送电子邮件到info@proyecto-es.com 告知学校并申请延后课

程开始日期。一旦学生取得在本校（PROYECTO ESPAÑOL）学习的签证后，不得取消，更改或缩短课

时。在任何情况下，不退还60 欧元的报名注册费。

官方的签证规定，欺诈以及第三方的取消政策要求我们严格执行本校的取消政策。为了避免课程被取消造成的经济损失，我们建议您购买涵盖了课程被取消的赔偿的旅游保险。

如您需要咨询任何额外的信息，请与我们联系。

https://proyecto-es.com/es/recursos/visado

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Pictures

Figure 3 photo of a language exchange activity

Figure 4 photo of a marketing event

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Supervisor Evaluation Form

Career Services Faculty of Arts, PO Box 716, 9700 AS Groningen, the Netherlands Tel.: +31 (0)50-363 5844; www.rug.nl/let/careerservices; stages.let@rug.nl

Evaluation form for placement providers Placement provider: ... ALC PROYECTO

ESPAÑOL………

Department: ………ACADEMIC……….

City: ………ALICANTE………

Country:………SPAIN………

Name student ... Shen Jian

……….

Placement period:……… 10/02/2020…….

to……15/05/2020……….………..

Description of tasks

1. Which tasks have been performed by the student? (This concerns main tasks as described in the contract and possible other activities)

Support of the English Department (students and teachers).

o Supplementary lessons to Spanish students learning English.

o Organization of the conversation exchange with International students.

o Produce supplementary teaching materials and participate in classes as required.

• Provide support to our marketing department.

o Support to social media efforts in English (create material for our English blog and other social networks).

o Assist in the distribution or delivery of marketing materials.

o Schedule and coordinate speaking engagements, appearances, photo shoots, and other special events.

o Assist with mailings, print production, etc.

o Create or update databases.

• Assisting in Front Office as required.

o Greet students.

o Provide commercial information to customers.

o Answer all calls promptly in a courteous and efficient manner.

o Open and sort mail.

………..

2. To what extent has your organisation benefitted from the activities of the student and to what extent will you use the results?

O not at all O to some extent

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O sufficiently XO to a large extent Evaluation of the tasks

3. What is your opinion about the quality of the content of the reports, notes, publications, research, translations, etc. written by the student?

O insufficient O sufficient XO good O excellent

4. What is your opinion about the student’s writing skills? O insufficient

O sufficient XO good O excellent

5. What is your opinion about the student’s oral skills? O insufficient

6. What is your opinion about the student’s accuracy and thoroughness?

O insufficient O sufficient XO good O excellent

7. What is your opinion about the pace at which the tasks were performed? O insufficient

8. What is your opinion about the student’s organisational skills? O insufficient

O sufficient O good XO excellent

9. In general, what is your opinion about the quality of the student’s performance? O insufficient

Evaluation of the student's functioning

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10. What is your opinion about the student’s ability to perform his/her tasks independently?

O insufficient O sufficient O good XO excellent

11. To what extent was the student interested in his/her tasks? O insufficient

O sufficient O good XO excellent

12. To what extent was the student interested in other activities within your organisation? O insufficient

13. How did the interaction between supervisor and student develop?

O badly O not very well O well

XO extremely well

14. How did the cooperation with co-workers develop? O badly

O not very well O well

XO extremely well

15. What is your opinion about the student’s level of knowledge? O insufficient

16. To what extent did the student's attitude fit in with the work climate of your organisation?

O insufficient O sufficient O good XO excellent Additional questions

17. Have there been problems supervising the student?

O Yes, concerning ………..………

XO No

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18. In future, would you again offer a placement to a student of the Faculty of Arts?

XO Yes, because ... International profiles are very valuable for our organization……….………..

O No, because………..

19. Would you now or in the future appreciate a meeting with the supervising university lecturer or the placement coordinator of the Faculty?

xO Yes

O No

20. Do you have further question or comments?

………..

………

….. DATE: ………15/05/20……… NAME & SIGNATURE: ………

ERIKA HERNANDEZ………...

1.Description of Organization

Table of Contents

Introduction

1.Description of Organization

2.Student position and tasks

3.Evaluation

Conclusion

Reference

Appendix I: Example of Translation Assignment

Visado

Pictures

Supervisor Evaluation Form