welcome

maestria didactica theories SLA
by: cminnova

Welcome to the course on THEORIES OF FIRST AND SECOND LANGUAGE ACQUISITION

Introductory course to the M.A in Didactics of English at Universidad de Caldas

 

This blog gathers brilliant work done by students of the M.A program in the introductory course. You´re welcome to read these initial essays on topics of interest for the students and of possible research  potential for the future.

Carlos Man Ospina Nova
B. A Modern Languages
B. S Psychology
M.A Linguistics
Ph.D Education

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Drama and education

EDUCATION: A CRITICAL SYSTEM THAT NEEDS DRAMA

By Olga Nancy Orozco Cañón

Caldas University

     No school without spectacular eccentrics

and crazy hearts is worth attending
Saul Bellow

     Education is the performance of our life. Education in its broadest, general sense is the means through which the aims and habits of a group of people get passed on from one generation to the next. Generally, it occurs through any experience that has a formative effect on the way one thinks, feels, or acts. Drama is the specific mode of fiction represented in performance. The term comes from a Greek word meaning "action" (Classical Greek: δρᾶμα, drama), which is derived from "to do" or "to act" (Classical Greek: δράω, draō). This way, it is true that education seems to be a current system where learners should be trained through dramatic experiences; experiences that involve  their life improvement.

     During children's early years, we realize that students have different needs and we teachers should  make their life better  so that  they   make good decisions about what they can do and the way to do it. Our main goal is letting students  reach a comfortable life to become good human beings; a life that allows them to be part of  higher education.  In most developed countries a high proportion of the population   now enters higher education at some time in their lives. Higher education is therefore very important to national economies, both as a significant industry in its own right, and as a source of trained and educated personnel for the rest of the economy. 

     We certainly know that great improvements have been achieved in the past decade, yet a great deal still need to be reached . And it is time to change the controversial theory that elite members have about education, as Thomas Frey said in The Future of the Education: “They perpetuate the notion that only doctors can understand medicine, only physics can understand how the  universe works, and only teachers know how to prepare students for the world to come”. 

 

     Education needs drama today.  Teachers should  realize  that students need “action” to acquire knowledge. We need people with good ideas, with excellent projects, with open minds to have inventions, experiments, innovations  and most importantly,  people who can have fun and make the world a more pleasant place. Learning by doing must be our purpose as  teachers today.

Changing the Future Education: an Old Fashioned Term

                                                                  Jonathan Vela Saavedra

Changing the future of education is a very popular and known phrase, nothing else than that, used by thousands of people such as the government, education Ministers and even professors who are about to retire. Future education is defined as the big impact and change the teaching and learning process will have in our society in the next coming years. Some time ago, government and education experts started to worry about the low English levels students were graduating with after school, so they began to come up with different ideas, methods and approaches in order to change the future of education. Today, in most of the English classrooms professors still think about changing the education, improving the education, but classes are the same from that time ago with unmotivated students, meaningless lessons and even worst teacher-centered classes.  However, government official  insist  the education system has improved and English is taught better than before.   Education has to change now, this is the moment when teachers  have to stop thinking and start acting in order to improve the teaching-learning process, otherwise our education and the illustrious “Bilingualism project” will always be a disaster in Colombia.

First, Language teachers have to understand they are mediators between knowledge and students, that the traditional methods, which make the English teacher an all-dominant authority, are old-fashioned and must disappear now. Some time ago Dewey (1938) criticized the spoon-feeding of knowledge, and highlighted the significance of the learner as an active agent in his own learning process. Later on, he suggested the celebrated term “learner-centeredness” which today, about 75 years later, keeps being just a term since English teachers still plan classes without taking into account students’ needs. They do not even think about the reasons why students are in the classroom or what their purpose is to learn a second language. Sadly, the idea of future education just remains in our minds and it will continue in the same condition unless teachers change their way of thinking.

   After the year 2000, the government got more involved in the second language learning in Colombia, according to Jan Van De Putte, a British Council Colombia and National Education Minister consultant, “due to economic interests (because of opening process and globalization)” and they created a huge project called “PROGRAMA NACIONAL DE BILINGUISMO. Colombia 2004-2019”. It basically consists on the English proficiency in Colombia as a second language by 2019. Today, we are about 7 years away from the deadline and students are still graduating from high schools with Basic English levels, A1 According to the Common European Framework. So, what are language teachers doing at school? Are they implementing new technologies in order to improve the English levels? The answer to both questions relies on the conditions schools work with and the communication breakdowns between government and professors.

Finally, It is necessary to say that “the chalk and cement board are behind” as Diana Carolina Cantillo says in her article “la educacion del futuro”. Nowadays, we have a lot of different materials to enhance the English teaching-learning process, to go out of the classroom and to have motivated students like technology which gives Language students thousands of tools to “touch” the language, to have contact with culture, to work and learn meaningfully.

Education has to change today, Colombian teachers have to modify their mind and stop complaining about “the situation”, you are the ones who make the difference; you are not the centre of the class. Take into account the Humanistic Approach developed during the half of the 20^th century or the Communicative Language Teaching from the 60s, the internet possibilities and how useful it may be for your meaningful lessons, change your perception classes are students-centered and nowadays students’ needs are different, the world is different, so the future is what you are doing right now inside the classroom, and only in that way the Bilingualism project and the English teaching- learning process will be completely successful in our country. 

Automation of Higher Education, the matrix needed by the market

                                                                        Rosario Rivera Quintero

The increased use of technology in education is more evident nowadays than before. Universities and educational institutions are investing and rushing trying to implement virtual courses and offering tuition in which technology plays a supreme role. Consequently  universities are going to disappear in the future or at least they will be no longer as we know them today.

It is marvelous how we can have unlimited access to any kind of information or products through internet. People can learn, buy or sell, be connected with other people around the world, know many cultures, work or be entertained through it. We are potential consumers of whatever it comes through it.

Using Internet to have access to any service or information, where people can buy or obtain unlimited services, why not  offer tuition this way? Education becomes then  a very interesting product to be sold. Education is seen as merchandise and a very profitable land for investors and private companies who count on and have a vast target community of consumers worldwide.

If universities tend to disappear in the future as we know them today under the premise that virtual education is a must, so universities have to be ready and start to create the necessary infrastructure, otherwise they will be left behind. They have to be competitive, they have to create a large range of courseware enough competitive to be in force in the market.

And who is behind all this? At the end of the day who is receiving the profits and benefits? Few courseware producers, coordinators, deans, consortiums, hackers, IBM, cable companies, Microsoft? Who is going to control it or regulate it? What is going to happen with intellectual property? Who is going to have the monopoly? What is the role of the State? What is the role of teachers and students? Can everybody have access to it? In this new era, you’d better become an expert creating effective courseware or you will be no longer in the market. Universities had better enroll the best marketing chains or they will die.

It is hard for me to imagine a university interested in only making money, it is hard for me to visualize it virtual, not as a land where people can converge, discuss, argue and create knowledge. It was within a community of philosophers, mathematicians, engineers, musicians, actors who came together and from whom I got a minimum sense of life.

It was there where I could feel them, smell them, touch them, laugh and perhaps share a coffee. Some would say, well you can do the same in a virtual community, or people will find the way, well, for me it is not the same. It was there where I started to be conscious about the others, we looked for changes, we were interested in human beings and values rather than in making money. Universities and we  teachers can benefit from the technology in all its forms, but we cannot forget our role in forming human beings whose ultimate goal cannot be making money.

English changes your students´ lives

Sandra Liliana  Ramos Aristizabal

For many years English has been seen as a barrier. Many people thought it was difficult to learn this language and they did not consider it important in their lives. But the process of globalization, the new technologies, the world of information and the entertainment have urged people to learn English as a second language and to get involved in its culture.

According to an article (taken from http://cedsgt.com/teamblog/education/4-good-reasons-to-make-english-your-second-language/ ) there are four reasons why people should learn English:   scope, communication, availability and simplicity. Most of the information in internet is in English, it is the second language spoken in the world, you can practice it everywhere and it has clear grammar patterns compared with other languages. If you think about this you will start learning English now.

Although in a country like Colombia there are many factors that can hamper this process, we can make our students   think differently and show them the great opportunities English can give them.  I have met many people who have traveled abroad to get an excellent job, better payment and a new life. English can also be the key to find new friends anywhere, as well as it is the best way to feel more connected with the world because most of the information is in English. In fact, in this moment it is necessary to pass an English exam to get graduated from most universities. 

WHAT IS LOVE? BABY DON’T HURT ME

 Teaching to love goes first before learning can take place

                Lexis Johana Urueña Leon

Love is one of the most important things in our life.  We need love to live; our existence was created by love but we have a wrong idea about what love is. Usually we think when we are in love  the other person lives just because of us, we are everything for them; and we think we really love someone when we spend our life trying to make the other one happy.

We need to think who we are, what is that we really want, how we can make us happy. We need to realize that our life does not depend of the others, I am important just because I am, I have to love myself to get anybody else to love me and I have to love even if nobody else does. When we can teach this to he students, when our students understand it and live according with this reflection we might say we have changed the world.