Mr. Ramón's
English Corner

Derek Walcott once wrote that English is nobody's special property — it belongs to the imagination, to language itself. That idea took me a while to fully internalise as a teacher. The language we teach does not belong to any single country, accent, or textbook. It belongs to whoever speaks it.

And today, that is an enormous, incredibly diverse group of people. Around two billion of them, according to linguist David Crystal. Which raises an uncomfortable but necessary question: when we teach English, whose English are we teaching?

A shared road — with a darker side

I like to think of English as a lingua franca the way you might think of a shared road. It does not belong to any driver, and it gets you places no other road can. But roads displace things when they are built. The spread of English has historically coincided with the marginalisation of other languages — Celtic languages, indigenous languages in the Americas and Australia, many African languages. When a language disappears, it takes with it a unique way of seeing the world.

Here in Spain, the tension is real but interesting. Anglicisms are creeping into advertising, social media, everyday conversation. I don't think the answer is to resist this defensively. I think the answer is to teach students to be conscious and curious about language — to embrace English as a tool without ever feeling that it makes their own language smaller.

The summer in Galway that changed everything

I spent two summers in Ireland — one in Galway, one in Dublin — and despite having a solid level of English, the first few days in Galway were genuinely disorienting. The rhythm, the intonation, the way certain vowels stretched and consonants disappeared — none of it matched what I had been trained to expect. It was not that I didn't know English. It was that my ear had only ever been calibrated to one version of it.

After a couple of weeks, something clicked. I hadn't learned new grammar. I had simply accumulated enough exposure that my brain started recognising the patterns. That gradual unlocking — that is what real comprehension feels like. And it is something we can begin to build even in primary school, through carefully chosen audio and video materials, stories told with different accents, songs from different corners of the English-speaking world.

What this means in the classroom

With Year 1 and Year 2 students, I am not trying to turn anyone into an accent-navigator. I am trying to give them a secure, joyful foundation in the language, while also — through the songs I choose, the stories I tell, the videos I show — beginning to suggest that English is bigger than any one classroom. That it is spoken in a thousand different voices, and that all of those voices are worth listening to.

As primary EFL teachers, we are not just teaching a language. We are, in a quiet and persistent way, teaching a way of being in the world.

In primary EFL, we usually treat motivation like a battery: either the student brings it from home or they don't. But I'm increasingly convinced it's more of a muscle — something we can help them build, day by day.

Here's what I've come to believe: we wait for students to feel motivated before they work, but it actually works the other way around. They need to taste a small victory first. Our job as teachers is to be architects of those small wins — to design tasks that feel just about doable, so the student moves from fear to action.

The "suspense movie" effect

One of the most useful ideas I've come across is what I call the suspense movie effect. Instead of starting a lesson by explaining what students are going to learn, try starting with a mystery. A strange object, an incomplete image, a question with no obvious answer. This creates a "brain itch" — a genuine desire to know more. Curiosity, it turns out, is far more powerful fuel than any sticker chart.

Once that curiosity is sparked, the key is letting students be the protagonists of the task rather than passive receivers of content. When they solve the puzzle themselves, they get that "I did it!" feeling — and that feeling is what makes learning stick.

The anxiety question

There's another side to this that often gets overlooked: the fear of making mistakes. Even the most playful, well-designed activity can fail if a child feels judged. Creating an anxiety-free atmosphere is not a soft extra — it is the foundation for everything else.

In practice, this means focusing on what students are communicating rather than penalising every error. It means modelling the language rather than correcting it constantly. It means turning the classroom into a space where participation feels natural, not risky.

The goal, ultimately, is a learner-centred classroom — not just in the sense of "fun activities," but in the deeper sense of a space where students feel capable, connected, and genuinely in charge of their own progress.

There is a frustrating paradox in many of our schools: we surround students with screens, yet their learning remains static. We have confused the ability to use a computer with the ability to teach with one. Too often, PowerPoint slides and digital whiteboards become little more than shining blackboards — the same old transmission of information, just with a prettier glow.

Giving a student a tablet without a communication-based strategy is like giving someone a car without teaching them to drive. The hardware is not the revolution. The pedagogy is.

ICT as a pedagogical amplifier

After reflecting on this for a while — and after plenty of trial and error in the classroom — I have come to think of ICT not as a solution but as an amplifier. Like any amplifier, it magnifies what is already there. If the teaching is purposeful and student-centred, technology makes it richer. If the teaching is passive and content-heavy, technology just makes it louder.

This means integration has to be intentional. Whether we use gamification platforms for motivation, multimedia for authentic language input, or collaborative tools for group work, the goal is always the same: align the tool with a clear linguistic purpose. The question to ask before every digital activity is not "is this engaging?" but "what language is this actually practising?"

The screen time question

Recent legislation in Spain limiting screen time in primary education signals something important: the debate is no longer about whether ICT is useful, but about how much is too much. A responsible classroom must balance the energy and immediacy of digital tasks with the depth that handwriting, face-to-face dialogue, and hands-on activities still provide.

ICT is not a revolution, nor is it a mirage. It is a responsive tool — one that empowers students to take ownership of their language learning when, and only when, pedagogy leads the way.

Every teacher reaches a point where the classroom feels too small for everything they want to share. Notes get lost, resources disappear, and the thinking behind a lesson — why you chose that activity, what you were hoping would happen — never makes it past the staffroom door.

That is why this blog exists. It is a space to make my resources available to students, families and fellow teachers, and to think out loud about what it actually means to teach English well to young learners today.

Three ideas that shape everything here

Technology with purpose. I am a firm believer in using digital tools in the classroom — but only when they serve a clear linguistic goal. A tablet without a strategy is just a distraction. When technology is used well, it transforms engagement, personalises learning and opens the classroom to the world. That balance is something I think about constantly.

Storytelling as an anchor. Stories give language a home. They create context, emotion and memory — which is exactly what helps new words and structures stick. Most of the resources you will find here are built around a narrative of some kind, from a seasonal storybook for Year 1 to a mystery escape room for Year 6.

The mistake as a stepping stone. Language learning is messy, and that is fine. An anxiety-free classroom — one where students feel safe enough to try, fail and try again — is not a soft extra. It is the foundation. My job is not to correct every error but to keep the communication going.

Welcome aboard. New resources and posts coming regularly. 🎉