Challenges and Solutions in Teaching Spanish as a Foreign Language in India: Exploring the Role of Mother Tongue

DOI: 10.24833/2949–6357.2024.GEO.1 УДК: 811.134.2

Mayuresh Kumar
PhD, Assistant Professor, Aligarh Muslim University, Aligarh, India;
email: 33mayuresh@gmail.com

Abstract
Teaching Spanish in India presents unique challenges. Due to its diverse geography, various teaching setups exist, catering to students’ different needs who come from diverse regions. Some have access to classrooms, while others simply cannot af­ford them. Many of them rely on outdated methods like gram­mar-translation due to a lack of awareness of modern approach­es. It is also to be noted that English proficiency is limited in rural and semi-urban areas. Teaching Spanish is challenging in this context. One solution in this case might be using the moth­er tongue, such as Hindi, to enhance understanding and to facili­tate learning. This paper explores how Spanish can be better learned through Hindi, advocating for bilingualism. The research methodology in this case is qualitative, focusing on understand­ing student motivation and beliefs while considering the broad­er implications of using mother tongue to teach a foreign lan­guage.

Keywords: didactics, mother tongue, comparative phrase­ology, contrastive analysis, Hindi, Spanish.

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