2DayLanguages explains you what Cervantes Institute (Instituto Cervantes) is since it is a worldwide non-profit organization created by the Spanish goverment in 1991, 21st of March. It was created to promote Spanish language in the rest of the world. It can be compared to the British Council, the Goethe-Institut or the Società Dante Alighieri for English, German or Italian regarding to their functions. Although Cervantes Institute is way younger than the other institutions mentioned before, it hasn’t stopped growing since the day of its establishment.
These are some of the functions that Cervantes Institute has:
- To promote pedagogy, study and the usage of Spanish.
- Contribute to the diffusion of Spanish culture abroad.
- To organize Spanish and other official language courses in Spain and other countries.
- To manage the DELE exams, which certify Spanish levels of A1, A2, B1, B2, C1 and C2.
In addition, the Cervantes Institute is responsible for describing and recommending various grammatical, cultural, diacritic or phonetic contents that has to be studied in each level. All of that appears in the Cervantes Institute Curriculum Plan (Plan Curricular del Instituto Cervantes), an extended piece of work that many Spanish schools use as basis for their study curriculums, 2DayLanguages is one of them. Therefore, if you come to study at 2DayLanguages everything you study corresponds perfectly to your level and the election isn’t just casual, but based on the Cervantes Institute.
To teach Spanish Cervantes Institute has 58 centers, 1240 teachers and more than 1600 hours of class per day. You can find Cervantes Institute centers that possess libraries in more than 90 cities of 43 countries like Israel, France, Brazil, Australia or China. The Institute have had seven directors so far of whom only one was a woman so far. The actual director is a Spanish philologist Victor García de la Concha.
In spite of having lots of headquarters around the work, the central one is located in Madrid, in the very beautiful building that used to be a bank. Interestingly, the safe of the bank still remains in the building, however now it’s being used for different purposes. Since 2007 a lot of Spanish cultural figures have saved their secret documents so that the documents could be opened only after their deaths. What would you save there if you had an opportunity?
In the countries where Cervantes Institute is have their headquarters, it organizes a lot of activities like exhibitions, book presentations or meetings with cultural figures. One of the most remarkable activities is the E Day, a Spanish party, which promotes Spanish language and its culture. In addition, that day a favorite Spanish word is chosen through a contest in the internet.
What is your favorite word in Spanish? Some Spanish celebrities have already chosen theirs and explains them in this video:
https://youtube.com/watch?v=tI48hPtMeEU
In addition to all of that, Cervantes Institute have some webpages which have useful continents for Spanish learners and teachers. In the virtual center of Cervantes Institute you can find the news, articles about Spanish, literary works to download, podcast to practice oral comprehension and lots of exercises. If you are interested in learning Spanish, it is a good option to consult this webpage and all the books and other resources Cervantes Institute provides.
