Present & Future of the English Language in Chile

The Teachers of the Future.

As María Jesús says in here blog “With Salvador Allende, more less 35 years ago, that the current Socialist-led national government has begun a sweeping effort to make this country bilingual. However, only the rich kids in private schools got to study English, which mean that if you couldn’t afford to pay, you were left out”.

And how in the past teach English, wasn’t effective in public schools, because just teach grammar and rules of the English Language, but no the spoken language instead, many of the people that learn spoke English was because their were rich and had the opportunity to study in better schools, or go to foreign countries that spoke English. But these were just a few ones.

In our days its different how we teach and learn English Language, and more now because English is an international language, and is more spread through the Internet, were we can find free English lessons, and the majority of the articles, news, and publishing are in English. This way our environment forces us to keep this new tools, because we can use the English as a tool too.

We can see that in the past we didn’t have the same opportunities, and a big variety of different ways to learn a new Language like now a days, and with the new implementation of “English Opens Doors,” calls for all Chilean elementary and high school students to be able to pass a standardized listening and reading test a decade from now. But the more ambitious long-term goal is to make all 16 million of Chile’s people fluent in English within a generation.

This its very possible because we going to be teachers, that going to make a change in the education, we are teachers, that need, this program English Opens Doors, because we are well prepared in what we do, we understand English, we write in English, we think, we dream and we speak English. So in a future not so far we are real this program.

Chilean Teachers’ English Language Use

The Globalization and the necessity of Teachers of English.

When we talk about the globalization of the economy has had a direct impact on the Chilean people to learn and be conversant in English. Without a doubt English is the international language.

Up until 1973 Chile’s economy was closed in the sense that the major industries such as mining were national and foreigners could not invest. This changed under the Pinochet government and since then the country has been “invaded” by investors from all over the world. Take the mining industry for example. There are currently many joint ventures based in the mineral rich north of the country consisting of Chilean and foreign partners. Many investors come from Canada as well as Australia and whose native language is English. Another industry which has been opened up and heavily invested in is the maritime industry. The Japanese have been the principal investors in this industry.

Due to this investment in the Chilean economy, the engineering profession is one of the most popular academic areas of study. This latter one translates into English as “business administration.” With a major in business administration, Chileans can run and supervise North American companies and affiliates in Chile. So the need for engineers to be fluent in English. Professionals also need English if they plan to do a graduate degree in any European or North American university. There is also a segment of Chilean professionals who need English to do research or publish in English. In this case, reading and writing in English come into play more than actually speaking the language.

Teaching English in Chile can be viewed economically as a direct response for integration into the global economy through trade agreements with the United States, the Asia-Pacific region and the European Union. Consequently, private language institutes have grown ten-fold as a result and a national academic program has been implemented so that children will be fluent in English by high school.

The initial phase of the 18-month-old program, officially known as “English Opens Doors,” calls for all Chilean elementary and high school students to be able to pass a standardized listening and reading test a decade from now. But the more ambitious long-term goal is to make all 16 million of Chile’s people fluent in English within a generation.

So as a future Teacher of English I think we must to trust in our capacities because we are well prepared in what we do, we understand English, we write in English, we think, we dream and we speak English. We can make our students improve the standard of their language by hearing us, in this way I am talking about the importance of the language use.
But Teaching English is by no means the best paying job and you should be able to work for more than one employer if you choose to do so. Teaching is for those people with vocation.

Learning Styles

Code Of Conduct

Code of Conduct, in the Internet we can find different code of conduct, and different meanings, but at the same time we can created our own Code of Conduct, that we can use in all moment or if you want made part of your life, as your principles, we as a student of pedagogy we must to have one Code of Conduct and as a Teacher of English too.
So if you are able to create your own Code here you have some help:

- Be comprehensible with your students and parents.
- Be respectful with yourself and others.
- Be responsible with yourself and others.
- Listen carefully to others.
- Worry about your personal appearance
- Study every day, like a student, because you always will be a student.
- Obtain the last updates in your Subjects and General Culture.
- Talk with firmness but not yell to your students.
- And the most important believe on yourself, you are the Teacher.

As I said before this is a help, so you can add more things, because maybe I forgot something that you think it’s important. But by the moment this is my Code of Conduct.

Reflective Teaching

Reflective Teaching is an inquiry approach that emphasizes an ethic of caring, a constructivist approach to teaching, and creative problem solving (Henderson, 1996).

An ethic of caring respects the wonderful range of multiple talents and capacities of all individuals regardless of cultural, intellectual, or gender differences. A premium is placed on the dignity of all persons. Teachers using a constructivist approach place emphasis on big concepts, student questions, active learning, and cooperative learning, and they interweave assessment with teaching.

A constructivist approach seeks to connect theory to practice and views the student as "thinker, creator, and constructor." Integral to a constructivist theory of learning is creative problem solving. Teachers take responsibility for assessing and solving problems not with mechanistic "cook book" recipes, but by asking "What decisions should I be making?", "On what basis do I make these decisions?", and "What can I do to enhance learning?"

The model of reflection incorporates five categories of knowledge.
The professional knowledge bases are identified on the far right of the diagram. They include knowledge of self as teacher, knowledge of content, knowledge of teaching and learning, knowledge of students, and knowledge of school and societal contexts.
These knowledge bases are viewed as essential for what prospective teachers should know and be able to do.

On the far left of the diagram is the "doing" dimension of teacher behavior. It identifies performance indicators and involves the tasks of planning, implementing, and evaluating.
Incorporated in the conceptual framework are attributes or dispositions deemed critical to professional development. They must be nurtured. These are identified on the outside of the circle and incorporate the affective dimensions of the six principles.

The theory provides a unifying rationale for the activities that the instructor uses in the classroom; classroom observation and reflection enable the instructor to refine the theory and adjust teaching practice. Concepts that the teacher acquires through reading and professional development are absorbed into the theory and tested in the reflective practice cycle.
This cycle of theory building, practice and reflection continues throughout a teacher’s career, as the teacher evaluates new experiences and tests new or adapted theories against them.

What is Curriculum?

Curriculum has many different conceptions. It may include any educational experience. It may also be conceived as a conversation, relationships, and it is this phenomenon of plurality that is inherent in the new paradigm view of curriculum.
In the first published textbook on “Curriculum” in 1918, John Franklin Bobbitt noted that the idea of curriculum has its roots in the Latin word for a race-course, and explained curriculum as the course of deeds and experiences in which children become the adults that they should be, for success in adult society. He explained, further, that curriculum must be understood as encompassing not only those experiences that take place within schools, but the entire scope of formative experience both within and outside of schools. Further, this includes experiences that are not planned or directed, as well as experiences that are intentionally directed (in or out of school) for the purposeful formation of adult members of society.
In formal education or schooling, a curriculum is the set of course and their content offered at an institution such as a school or university. In some cases, a curriculum may be partially or entirely determined by an external body.

Sources of Curriculum
Exist four different sources in curriculum, despite some people says that the sources of Curriculum are five, I like to think just in four and each of them gives specific information.

(a) Sociological Source: It's related with cultural and social knowledges, attitudes and values that are given to the students inside the classroom in order to fit into the society in a responsible and active way.
(b) Psychological Source: It has to be with the student's development and learning process. What, When and How to learn.
(c) Pedagogical Source: It's related with the experience the teacher has gained throughout his/her career that gives essential elements to the curriculum's design.
(d) Epistemological Source: It has to be with the scientific knowledge and the way the teacher handle his/her class under this term that form part of the curriculum inside of methodologies, inward structures, etc.

The Philosophical Source is the other one and we disagree with some people that say this is a source, for us it forms part of the Sociological Source, and we like to think in that like an area of this big source that is the Sociological

Functions of Curriculum (Purposes)

- Determine the objective of the education

- The incorporation of the school to the culture

- Propose an action plan for getting objectives

- Guide the pedagogical practice, inside for questions:

· What to teach?

· When to teach?

· How to teach?

· What, how and when do teachers have to evaluate?

Theories
I will present eight theories about curriculum according to eight different authors, Nagel, Gimeno, Beauchamp, McCutcheon, McDonald, Kliebard, Taba and Zais..

Author and Theory
Nagel :To clarify vague concepts, understand them and then study them so it is possible to show the nature of the problem.

Gimeno: The curriculum theories are metatheories about the codes that form it and the way of thinking about it that carry out lots of functions like offer an idealistic cover to the scholar practice or become mediator between the thought and the action of teacher among others.

Beauchamp: Physical document used in the process dimension that is form by the planification, the launching and the curriculum's evaluation.

McCutcheon: An organized set of analysis, interpretations and comprehension of the curriculum phenomenon. Inside it there are the curriculum sources (development process, the curriculum's politic, etc) and the curriculum in use (the teacher's planification, etc)

McDonald: All the curriculum theories, some of them more than others, are a combination of proposals orientated to knowledge, to express the curriculum's conception and the social, cultural and personal field in which it exists. It's all about the nature of the knowledge.

Kliebard: To make understandable the concepts and questions that appear when we think what to teach, why we have to teach one thing instead of other, etc.

Taba: A way of organize the thought about what is highly relevant for its (curriculum) development, which are its important elements, how are they organized, etc..

Zais: A kind of plan of study which is conform by definitions, concepts, proposals, etc. The purpose of this is to describe, predict and explain the curriculum phenomenon.

Design and Development of Curriculum
The design of the curriculum is focus on the action plan, like the outlines that are going to be applied.
The development is to take this action plan to the practice.

Explicit and Latent Curriculum
Explicit Curriculum is in which its development is total which has to do with the practice, what, when and how to do it. It refers to what is consciously and intentionally presented.
Latent Curriculum is when learning results are different or they haven't been foreseen, that's why it's latent because is still unknown, this could contribute positively or negatively to education.

READING QUIZ Nº2

2 From syllabus design to

curriculum development

Ingrid López

Hellen Quintana

Cristian Sandoval

María Jesús Villa

English became the central language around the world, when USA won the World war II, International tourism, commerce and trade expanded an enormous demand of English courses, and the searching for new methods was needed.

During the 1950s the most important thing that teacher taught was grammar and vocabulary, furthermore they were taught in the same way for everyone, the same English for the same learners’ needs. In 1960s teaching tried to resolve the learner needs discovering what were this needs ,they focus in student needs through answering this questions “How people learn” and “What language is” but the criticism been made were that those methodologies did not work very well, they still thought that Language was only grammatical competence, and they were wrong, they did not consider language performance and did not answer the “why people learn a 2^nd language” and the results.

Despite of this criticism the ESP approach to language teaching considered learner needs, The big contribution of ESP was to focus students’ needs. English was taught for student who had different purposes, so the student did not need to learn everything only learn things she/he need to learn depending of their field, as a result the learner role or a particular role was consider.

ESP movement contributed to the concept of needs analysis with the separation of language, restriction: “basic skills”, selection: some vocabulary, grammar patterns, themes and topics: which are required by the learners’purposes, communicative needs. Also, only communicative needs by the learners’purposes.

Register analysis and discourse analysis contribute to ESP in the sense that..

Register analysis studies the language of such fields, it means, it analizes the words used for a specific situation and how some words have a higher frecuency than order words, also it analizes all kind the words as verbs, noun, etc and how these words contribute to form an organized sequence.

On the other side, discourse analysis is the analysis of units of organizations, it is focused at the level of the word and how these words are characterized in difficult use of language, all depend of the area that you want to analize. Discourse analysis examines the communicative contexts too.

Both of them help us to know students’ needs and it is demostrated in courses books, etc.

The importance of it, is when we want to get a job and we must learn or know a specific vocabulary from a special area, also we must know when we have to use a specific word and what we are trying to express. Some words could have a different meaning and it could be interpreted according to the situation, some words can be repeted in several times. The different areas are: medicine, journlism, etc

The features exemplified the sample of scientific english in appendix 1 and the lists of features of scientific english from Ewer and Hughes-Davies given in this chapter are:

- words similar in form but with different meanings for the same function

- most structural and qualifying words and phrases

- cause and result constructions.

- words similar in form but with different functions

- suffix.

Munby's model consists of two stages: Communication Needs Processor (CNP) and the interpretation of the profile of needs derived from the CNP in terms of micro-skills and micro-functions.

In a flight attendant that required training in english, the Munby Model should explores thoroughly every aspect relating to learner's needs.

1. Personal: Work Experience, age, sex nationality, cultural background.

2. Purpose: Develop oral and listening skills.

3. Settings: Type of airport and passengers

4. Interactional variables: Relation between he and the company and passengers

5. Medium, mode and channel: Spoken, face to face.

6. Dialects: Formal Language

7. Target Level: Advanced level

8. Anticipated Communicative events: Greetings, give information, answer

questions, etc.

9. Key: Unhurriedly, Courteously, Clearly, Politely

This indicates that it is taking into account language and culture and communication purpose, but pays no attention to implementation (activities, resources, and classroom dynamics)

Communicative competence is not only referred to the learner ability to apply and use grammatical rules, but also to form correct utterances, and know how to use them properly. For the other side, Grammatical competence is the ability to recognize and produce the distinctive grammatical structures of a language and to use them effectively in communication.

Ends-means model: Objectives, the ends of instruction, are first identified. The content

of instruction is selected to address the objectives, and the various instructional elements, the means, are then designed to assist students in attaining the objectives.

In other words, ends-means model it start with a determination of the kinds of language skills the learner needs in order to accomplish specific roles and tasks and then set out to teach the language needed to get there.

The limitations could be that the approach was sometimes reduced to a mechanistic set of procedures and rules know as a system-design model. The curricular system-design model has been prescriptive and rule-driven.

The selection of content is thought to be influenced in part by what is known about the learner and individual differences in background, ability, interest, and learning style. There is less concern for learning particular knowledge, so little distinction is made between the what (content) and how (delivery system) of instruction. What students are expected to learn is a product of the instructional activities, and may vary between learners. This is because it is thought that instructional content cannot be fully specified until student characteristics and interests are taken into account

Systems Approach

The systems approach considers two basic components: elements and processes. ELEMENTS are measurable things that can be linked together. They are also called objects, events, patterns, or structures. PROCESSES change elements from one form to another. They may also be called activities, relations, or functions. In a system the elements or processes are grouped in order to reduce the complexity of the system for conceptual or applied purposes. Depending on the system's design, groups and the interfaces between groups can be either elements or processes. Because elements or processes are grouped, there is variation within each group. Understanding the nature of this variation is central to the application of systems theory to problem-solving.

Curriculum development is used in this book to refer to the range of planning and implementation processes involved in developing or renewing a curriculum.

The aim of the following chapter is to survey concepts, issues, and practices in each of these areas in order to better facilitate the kind of planning and decision making that is involved in developing better language programs.

READING QUIZ Nº1

1 The origins of language

curriculum development

Ingrid López

Hellen Quintana

Cristian Sandoval

María Jesús Villa

This text provides a systematic introduction to the issues involved in planning, developing, and evaluating effective second and foreign language programs and teaching materials. The three aspects of the processes that we consider very important are:

a.- Contents in the developing process, its important to know what we are going to teach depending on the level of the students, ages, etc.

How should contents be selected?

b.- Methodology in implementing process, because teacher have to choose the right methodology depending on the kind of students they have, and in their different abilities to learn.

Which Methodology should be used?

c.- Evaluation Criteria in evaluation process, because there are many factors (stress, tiredness, etc) that affect the results of an evaluation and some times it doesn’t reflect what student really know.

How learner should be evaluated?

Key stages in the curriculum development process are examined, including the difference between syllabus design and curriculum development, which is that in the first one (syllabus design) is just concerned with the selection, sequencing and justification of the content of the curriculum and the second one (curriculum development) includes the processes that are used to determine the needs of a group of learners. What, When and How to teach and How to evaluate.

Besides this text makes reference to syllabus and we, as future teachers, should have a kind of relation with the syllabus developed in language programs. Fortunately, we are familiar with some English Books like “Project Plus” (Oxford), Magic Teens (Richmond Publishing), New Headway (Oxford) among others, and we can say they are pretty good and well organized. They show very clear the fundamental objectives of the program and the ways that those are going to take effect.

Characteristics of a Language Teaching Method

(a) Methods continue, in one way or other, in the time.

(b) Methods are specifications for the processes of instruction on language teaching.

(c) Methods prescribe not only the way a language should be taught.

(d) Methods also prescribe the order in which contents should be presented.

The issues of selection and graduation to language teaching today are highly relevant because of time and some others factors that do not allow teachers to teach the whole of language. Then it is very important to select what or everything to teach to the student.

The factors that influence current views of selection and gradation are:

A) the amount of time available for teaching.

B) The objetive of the courses.

C) The teaching method use.

D) Select the words according to the kind of students

E) Select the words that could be used in everyday life’s students.

This text also makes reference to a low-level language teaching, and here there are some factors that influence the selection and gradation of grammatical items in the text. We consider those are the following:

a) First should be taught Structures that are similar to those of the native language (Linguistic

distance)

b) Simple structures should be taught before complex structures (Intrinsic difficulties)

c) Some structures will be need early, can not be postpones. (Communicative need)

d) The frequency of occurrence of structures and grammatical items in the target language

(frequency)

If the grammatical material is not be graded first, is going to be impossible to know what tenses and moods are the most important and useful for the leaners.

Concepts of selection and gradation are compatible with the use of authentic texts or sources in language teaching becauseone thing help to the other. To teach efectively, we as teachers must select the texts according to our goals. Also we must be clear about all the aspects present in the textbook, and if it has a continuity, is clear, is simply to teach or not, is useful for the students, if it has frecuency and if the textbook present a logical progression.

INowadays word lists such as those illustrated in Appendix 1 and 2 are not very common because people are just interested in knowing the meaning of a word and that's all. For us and for those that study English I think this kind of word lists are very useful because they show you the different branches that a word could have depending on the context, etc.

Ley Orgánica Constitucional de Enseñanza

Ingrid López

Hellen Quintana

Cristian Sandoval

María Jesús Villa

Law Nº 18.962

Ley Orgánica Constitucional de Enseñanza

La Ley Orgánica Constitucional de Enseñanza, more known as LOCE, was promulgated on March 7^th, 1990 for Pinochet one day before quitting the power, and in March 10, in the same year, it was published. This has got as aims fix the minimal requirements that must fulfill the levels of Primary and Secondary school.

The duty of the State is control the process of the educational establishments.

Efforts to modify it, although they were focalized in college education, have existed during the 90s. No one of them, could arrive to the Parliament where "The alliance" always have shown its objection. The debate, by the way, was mixed up on the way over.

The law was constitute assembling different decrees dictated during the decade of the 80's, that were reflecting the effort of the dictatorship for transforming the educational field, favoring the revenue of private, transforming the role of the teacher's condition to subsidiary, and assuring constitutionally the freedom of understood education, basically, as freedom of property concerned of educational establishments.

Primary School will have as general aims achieve students are able of:

a) To understand the reality in his personal, social, natural and transcendent dimension, and to develop his physical, affective and intellectual potentials.

b) To think about creative, original, reflexive, rigorous and critical form, and to have spirit of initiative.

c) To take part in the life of the conscious community of his duties and rights, and to prepare itself to be citizens.

d) To continue studies of average level, of agreement with his aptitudes and expectations.

But to be able to achieve the general aims, students of the primary school will have to reach the following minimal requirements:

a) To be able to read and write, express correctly in the Spanish language in oral and written form, and to be able of estimating other manners of communication.

b) To dominate the arithmetical fundamental operations and to know the beginning of the basic mathematics and his complementary essential notions.

c) To develop his native sense and to know the history and geography of Chile.

d) To know and to practice his duties and rights that concern to the community, in form concrete and applied to the reality through that the pupil and his family live.

e) To know the elementary notions of the natural and social sciences, to understand and value the importance of the environment.

f) Be aware of the importance of taking part actively in expressions of the culture related to the art, the science and the technology and obtaining a physical harmonic development.

The Secondary School will have got as general aims achieve that students, once they have been graduated, they are able:

a) To develop his intellectual, affective and physical capacities based on spiritual, ethical and civic values.

b) To develop his aptitude to think freely and reflectively and to judge to decide and to tackle activities for the same one.

c) To understand the world in which he lives and to achieve his integration on it.

d) To know and estimate our historical - cultural legacy and to know the national and international reality.

e) To continue studies or to develop activities of agreement with his aptitudes and expectations.

But to be able to achieve the general aims, students of the Secondary School will have to reach the following minimal requirements:

a) To acquire and to value the knowledge of the philosophy of the sciences, of the letters, of the arts and of the technology with the depth that fits to this level developing aptitudes for acting constructively in the development of the well-being of the man.

b) To acquire the necessary skills to use adequately the oral and written language and to estimate the communication in the expressions of the language.

c) To acquire the knowledges that allowed him to estimate the projections of the science and modern technology.

d) To know and estimate the natural way as a dynamical and essential environment for the development of the human life.

e) To know and understand the historical development and the values and national traditions that allowed him to take part actively in the projects of development of the country.

f) To develop the creativity and the skill to estimate the expressive values of the aesthetic communication in the diverse cultural manifestations.

g) To acquire the motivation and necessary preparation that they facilitate his personal development to him.

Ley Orgánica Constitucional de Enseñanza.

Advantages

Disvantages

- This Law indicates what to teach and also help in children’s development. - Every chilean has the right to be in a school and receive education. - If a girl student is pregnant, she has the right to continue with her edcucation process in the year that she believes is the indicate. - Every level of learners can receive education for a good formation as person. - The goverment must defend the right of free education. - Every grade has different steps that will help to continue the other grades. - The kinder garden is the first floor to start a good level of education - The educational level is divided into 4 levels, they are: kinder garden, primary, secondary education and superior education (university, proffesional institutions, etc). And it allows ckech the contents in a good manner. - The hours for education years ago were increased for get a good quality education.

- When the students are selected, the principal don’t care the student’s feeling. - The students are not the main protagonistic in the education process - Schools from country side do not have the same than students who are from urban zones. - The person related to the economical area do not need special education to represent a school. - Some schools do not have teachers that are really competent. - Some schools do not have the furniture neccesary to give an efective educaction. - To create a university, the principal just need basic paper to create it. - There are not special programs for students that have different ways of learning. - The budget for kinder gardens, elementary and secondary schools are really different between them. - L.O.C.E isolates students from municipal schools or individuals subsidized of Chile. - The schools structure is not organized very well.

Despite of the big criticisms that this law has got, it is not totally wrong, but in practice, in many aspects it creates a contradiction. Like it is indicated in the article Nº 2, "Education is a right of everybody", then it is good, but what about the quality of it? Is it the same for everyone?.

From our point of view, we think this law turns the education into a good, not in a right as it barely stipulated in the second article.