Adrià's Language Portfolio

Language biography:

My name is Adrià Lapuente Roca, I am twenty-one years old and I was born and raised in Valencia. My parents share origin with me but have different mother tongues, so at home my eighteen-year-old brother and me speak Catalan with my mum and between us, and Castilian with my dad.

Moreover, I attended Escola La Masia, an only-Catalan speaking school which developed my Catalan skills for fourteen years. This also made me use Catalan as a L1 with my friends

Regarding my English knowledge, I have always attended extracurricular lessons (always since I have consciousness of living) and this improved my knowledge of the language at the same time as it grew a desire to learn more about it and about the English culture. Following this will of learning more English I spent a month in Dublin (Ireland) and another one in Chester (UK) in consecutive years whilst doing my GCSEs to soak up the culture and improve my fluency and vocabulary. These two experiences triggered even more my will of spending more time abroad and, more specifically, in the United Kingdom. So, after taking my GCSE final exams, I decided (together with my parents) to move to the UK with a classmate for the following two years. I went there with a classmate from school and we did our high school in Steyning Grammar School (West Sussex, UK). This was an astonishing experience that definitely changed us in all aspects. We got to live without our parents (although we were tightly controlled by our house-parents from the boarding house), shared our time with students of many cultures and origins and even did a study programme very different and unknown to the Spanish one. We did the International Baccalaureate. This programme not only showed us a different way of working in class, but it also largely enlarged our knowledge of the world and of ourselves through its contents and teaching mechanics.

Furthermore, as we were living in an English-speaking context, our English level progressively increased in all areas, which also continuously improved our social relationships as we knew more the language and became more fluent.

In addition to this, as I always had the desire of learning more about languages and cultures, at the age of fourteen I decided to join an Italian language centre to start learning some Italian. This short but enriching experience also gave me a wider view on languages and culture, which has proved its utility ever since.

Hence, it could be said that I am now a plurilingual person who is happy with his personal language development and who also hopes to continue improving in these languages at the same time as acquiring new ones.

language dossier

As a future primary and English language teacher, I consider languages very important when it comes to the cognitive level. Also, the culture behind a language is for me very interesting and good to know and I would like to transmit this to my students. Thus, in order to be able to teach languages I consider I should have a certain level at them. This belief has driven me to get the C1 certificate of Catalan at La Junta Qualificadora (the regional institution controlling the Catalan exams) and the CAE (C1) certificate at Cambridge English; Language Assessment.

I also attain a 2-year certificate of high-school studies of Italian and I am preparing for the B1 exam.

language passport

My abilities in the Catalan, Castilian and English language are the following:

Understanding:

• I can understand extended speech even when it is not clearly structured and when relationships are only implied and not signalled explicitly. I can understand television programmes and films without too much effort.
•  I can understand long and complex factual and literary texts, appreciating distinctions of style. I can understand specialised articles and longer technical instructions, even when they do not relate to my field.

Speaking:

• I can express myself fluently and spontaneously without much obvious searching for expressions. I can use language flexibly and effectively for social and professional purposes.
•  I can formulate ideas and opinions with precision and relate my contribution skilfully to those of other speakers.I can present clear, detailed descriptions of complex subjects integrating sub-themes, developing particular points and rounding off with an appropriate conclusion.

Writing:

• I can express myself in clear, well-structured text, expressing points of view at some length. I can write about complex subjects in a letter, an essay or a report, underlining what I consider to be the salient issues. I can select a style appropriate to the reader in mind.