Lidiando con el conductismo, Práctica Profesional...

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Practicum's Log

“The benefit of learning English as a Second Language”

…Trying to convince students about the advantages of that!

Imagine that you are in an important casting for a company; you really want to be selected. The requirements that the chosen one should to have are the following: ability to understand the function of particular words in sentences, ability to figure out grammatical rules from language samples and/ or memory for new words. If you have some of them you have more possibilities to obtain that sort of “position” in the company, the job consists on learning a new language. Do you want to get the job? Having those “requirements” (In technical words those are aptitudes) you can have more facilities to learn a language…whatever you like! Have you ever thought that you can have that aptitudes or abilities for that? Maybe now you discover it, think about that!

When you learn a new language you are developing new competences for thinking. Studies argue that you use a specific part of the brain for learning each language. So you can consider that as long as you learn more languages you enrich your intelligence. And considering the cultural point of view if you know more than one language, apart from your mother tongue, you can have a really enriching cultural contact with people from different countries; you can communicate with all people that you want…ISN’T IT WONDERFUL?

Now, talking about English, you know that this language is the universal one. If you have the opportunity to learn it for free, why are you not going to take advantages of it? Whether at school or later on you should to learn English any way. English is in every where, and if you want to feel part of here having any idea of English can help you a lot…you can see that in songs, games, publicity, magazines, even chatting on messenger or somewhere else, you can came across with a foreign guy and if you do not know how to express yourself in that conversation then probably you are going to feel ashamed or uncomfortable. On the other hand if you make a good use of your knowledge of English and you combine properly that sort of knowledge you can have really goods opportunities of dating with someone, getting good jobs, understanding movies without reading the subtitles, playing games perfectly, etc… don’t you feel happy when you think of all those possibilities?

That is like playing the guitar. First you have no idea how to play it, but you really want to know how to do it. Then, little by little you start to play first just a single note, then a piece of a song and then a whole one. At that phase you feel almost like a rock star, and then, when you can play even your favourite song in guitar…OH MY GOD, you feel you are THE BEST! You can do something that maybe someone else cannot. You can excel yourself. Don’t you feel special having that ability that others do not? My dear friend that is called SELF- ESTEEM…and imagine how it increases when you can perform yourself in a foreign language! And if it is English much better.

Certainly there is something that I can assert that it is true: English opens doors. Nowadays the percent of people that know how to speak in English is not enough to consider ourselves as a bilingual country. But you can help to increase that figure. I, as a teacher, just give you the tools to work, but the task is yours! LET’S GO MY DEAR FRIEND, you can be a “rock star”!

Camila Gómez

Since I am a reasonable person I want to be a teacher, I think that is because through teaching we have the possibility to know different realities, to help people and to be helped by them (I mean to improve ourselves and to learn from others’ mistakes) at the same time. I have never imagined myself working in other place different from a classroom, what am I going to do in an office, a hospital, or in a bank? Nothing to do with me…

I consider that teaching is something really enriching because when you share your knowledge with someone else you are helping a lot. In this case my set of knowledge are supposed to be related with English, but that is not all, I mean apart from teaching English I have the responsibility to teach my students about values and how to face future’s challenges in life. I can not ignore what is going on in the classroom and just be worried about my lesson and that is it. Imagine that some of my students is having a personal problem and is crying, or even worse he or she is cutting his/her arm because of a depression…Can I continue my class as nothing happens? My goodness! Be a teacher is not just teaching, it is dealing with everyday’s situations, with people’s problems and feelings and if I chose being a teacher I can not ignore them and I have to be responsible of my job, the whole job…not just the part of giving classes and taking tests only.

Once I saw a movie, “Mr. Holland Opus”, in which the teacher, a music teacher, changes student’s feelings and student’s perception of life. I kept that idea as the ideal representation of teacher’s mission. I mean, what is more significant for a student: to have someone expert in English to teach him/her or to have a kind of friend who, apart from helps with academic problems, gives their students comfort and confidence to share life’s experiences?

If I have the chance to change student’s life, why am I not going to take it? We have to keep in mind that someone who hates English, for example, can decide to study English pedagogy after having a good teacher (A good teacher means someone not just good at English…)

I’m not going to recommend studying pedagogy to someone who wants to work just for the fact of earning money. For he or she there are several works that he/ she can do just for making money. On the other hand if someone wants to have a motivating work teaching is the one, if someone wants a really demanding and challenging work teaching is the one, if someone is creative, responsible, sensitive, empathic, sensible, etc, he/she can be a good teacher.

Now, talking about the practice, how can I be that kind of “ideal” teacher? Let’s see…

First of all we should to dominate the set of knowledge that we are going to teach, otherwise we are going to make our students feel insecure and uncomfortable being taught by someone that does not know enough. But, be careful, the idea is to facilitate the process of learning in our students, not being a human- dictionary as English teacher are wrongly supposed to be, in other words not giving them all for free.

Then, creativity and effectiveness should to be present in every single class. Take it as a MUST. If the process of learning is falling into routine then there is no meaningful learning. We have to keep our students motivated with the subject; we have to create an appropriate classroom’s climate and do not be afraid of mistakes because they are part of the process of learning. We should to have the ability to face different behaviors, different personalities, different likes and dislikes in our students so we have to be creative enough to cover those differences.

Nowadays teachers can be considered as parents also because students do not spend too much time with their families. So, as a part of our job, we are in charge of our student’s self-esteem and orientation. Feelings and thoughts are really important. We should to be careful with the kind of activity or homework we design, for that we have to consider student’s realities, student’s dispositions, classroom environment, etc. If we do not pay enough attention to those factors we can be the responsible of a depression, a scholar desertion or even worse a suicide. Teachers are working with people, with feelings, so with lives. That is why some people say that we (prospective teachers) are the future of our country…

Camila Gómez