In Interview Techniques Workshop subject, teacher Carlos Andrade gives Erasmus+ students the opportunity to take tests in their native language.

Interview Techniques Workshop is a subject taught by teacher Carlos Andrade, in the 3rd year of the undergraduate course of Journalism. The teacher clarifies that this curricular unit usually has many international students’ inscriptions and that, whenever it’s possible, he gives them the opportunity to work in their native language. There have already been Spanish, Francophone and English speaking students passing through the experience. “There is a difference between doing an interview in our language and doing it in another that we do not know well, because we have answers that we do not understand well. The sense of opportunity is lost, since we only understand the general”, he explains.

The final work consists of an interview conducted by each student to an external guest. Therefore, it is essential that the guest also speaks the students’ language. This year, for the first time, interviews were conducted in Catalan and three students spoke in Valencian, a variation of this language. Carlos Andrade invited Rámon Font, the delegate of Catalonia in Portugal, to answer the students’ questions.

Ana Ballesteros and Claudia Ballester, of Universitat Rovira i Virgili in Tarragona, and Elisabeth García and Violeta Peraita, of the Universitat de València in Valencia, are journalism students and interviewed the Catalan guest in their native language.

These students chose ESCS for the Erasmus+ experience due to the practical component and the equipment that school offers. They consider that this was “the best” experience they had in the Communication area, due to the fact that the activities promoted by the teacher require a self-correction and a self-evaluation. Students point that, in the first class, teacher said that he wanted them to feel comfortable and to learn what he would try to explain, without worrying about Portuguese. “This is very positive because, in other subjects, we have to be dependent on knowing English or Portuguese, whereas in this one we can be ourselves and we can learn 100%, since we do not have to worry about the language”, they said, concluding that “there are few teachers like Carlos Andrade”.