Teachers in the Spanish Bilingual System

Spain introduced the bilingual program for public schools for the first time in 1996 as a joint venture of the Spanish Ministry of Education and the British Council. The ultimate goal was to make students fluent in English, which was considered a key factor in order to favour future employment projects and professional ambitions. The aim of this research is to determine the importance of the level of the language skills of language teachers in Early Childhood Education in order to favour language acquisition in students between 3 and 7 years old. This paper is part of a research line interested in both the competence and command of teachers in the second language and, to a lesser extent, the impact reading has on them. Therefore, different authors that allude to both themes and interrelate among them are mentioned. In the light of the results obtained, there seems to be a clear relationship between the level of language, the frequency of use by teachers in the classroom, and the ability of students to acquire a language. On the other hand, the idea that reading is very beneficial for students in terms of acquisition of the foreign language is also supported.