Foreign language education in Spain: A historical view

Foreign language education (FLE) has always been a pending issue in Spain. However, after the accession to the European Union, globalisation and the European Commission language policies (European Commission 1995), new and more effective approaches to language teaching have been progressively established. Bilingual education has proved to be a successful pedagogical model to increase the knowledge of languages and content (Lasagabaster and Ruiz de Zarobe 2010). This article overviews the development of FLE in Spain from the mid-20 century to date. The main methodological changes from traditional models such as grammar-translation, direct and audio-visual methods to communicative approaches like task-based language teaching and, more recently, CLIL (Content and Language Integrated Learning), will be examined in the light of the Spanish official language policies.