Teacher and Neocolonialism

A reflection from the “Primer Seminario Internacional en Metodología de la Investigación en Lenguaje y Cultura UPTC”

Since I started this master program, the seminar is the second time that I listen to someone saying that we, english teachers, are “transmitters of neocolonialism”, it was in the Dr. Julian Edge Conference. This idea, in particular, catches my attention because I consider a different thing, I could be sure that is not true, we are teachers and we try to show to our students the world in a different way, in other words, with others sounds, in my personal case I have never been in England or USA, for this reason I do not fell like a “transmitter of neocolonialism”, I am just a teacher and I try to do my job in a good way.  I am trying to understand every people, many points of view, different cultures, and of course learn about them.

I know the system, the politicizes in a second language learning/teaching are focused by a lot of English or North American programs, instead of we as teachers have the language power, we can teaching in a critical way. Nowadays we can find a lot of material from different countries and we can contrast different conceptions, different cultures different English languages and built our concept of a global knowledge, we have our culture and from this we can make our identity in a foreign language.  

Teachers always learn.

When I finished my degree I had never imagined that amazing job that I had to do.

Along my professional life teaching, around 8 years, I have taught to children, teenagers and adults, so that I believe we are learning exactly like them or maybe more than them.

“It is important to recognize that ideally, teachers are also learners and they “negotiate meanings” with their students”[1]

The classroom is the perfect place to interchange life experiences, points of view or reflections; it is the place where we understand the real world, and every this through the language. Although, this experience is very different than I learned at the university in my degree, I could not imagine the amazing job that I will have to do.

In the school we can develop a lot of abilities of students and when we are teaching a foreign language it is important take in account the purpose of the school. I consider, nowadays the school is not only the place where someone goes to study, today as before, the school is an active part of the society, the place where the children make friends, where they understand the rules of the society/school, where they built and express their selves ideas, the school is the place where the children start to fell as an active member of the society. I notice we have a huge responsability in our country, in our culture, with our future, with our children.

---

[1]  NOVAK, Joseph D.  A THEORY OF EDUCATION: MEANINGFUL LEARNING UNDERLIES THE CONSTRUCTIVE INTEGRATION OF THINKING, FEELING, AND ACTING LEADING TO EMPOWERMENT FOR COMMITMENT AND RESPONSIBILITY. Meaningful Learning Review – V1(2), pp. 1-14 , 2011

Being...

 Being a linguist o a philologist

Along my career I always had listened about the differences between linguistics and philology, and the conclusion that I had was “philology studies the language in itself focus in its rules and a good way to use, this takes in account the literature and the writing text along the time, instead of linguistics which studies the language its use in a specific context, it is more flexible with the rules and uses because the most important is the realization language.

Nowadays, I think so the linguistics and philologists are closer that I had ever imagined. We are interested in the language development; we are excited by the same thing “the words”, in a big conception. I am a classical philologist and, of course, I understand the classical languages, Latin and Greek, for this reason I can get the meaning of words through the etymology, it is a passion for me, I learn vocabulary in my native language and in foreign language.

I love to study the language in itself, its structure, its uses, its meaning, its history and I am every days interested in learning something new about the languages. Maybe it is the reason that I have to follow the Russian as a foreign language in my degree at the University of Colombia, where for my fortune, l could choice this language, it was not easy to understand because it has declinations, this is an analytic language, however I had an advantage, I was studying Latin and Greek and they have declinations too. I establish some meaning with the classical language and my nature language and then I can transfer them to learn Russian, It was an amazing adventure through languages.  

Despite my passion for this languages, after I finished my degree the language that help me to develop my professional way the English, which I studied as a free class at night in the university.   Since that  I go into the “angloworld”, but I have never left my essence as a classical philologist, for that reason I decided to continue with my English study and took a translation English-Spanish-English course, really I was amazing I can being a philologist whit a modern language “English”.  

In my own way with language I have been a detective, a historian and, why not, a poetry. During the time I was dedicated to classical languages, I had to research a lot for a “simple text”(like a little story in a determinate time) because its time, because its uses, because its speakers-writers or because its hearers-readers, and of course because its history, that it is impossible to separate them. In consequence I learned these languages; nowadays this is my first motivation to teach languages.

But I have too an otherwise like a linguist, I have worked closer to linguistics than philology, I have learned to understand the language in its realization, as a life thing which can change, transform and move along the time.  I remember the time when I was living in Sweden with my father’s family, my little sister, Erika, at that time she was 3 years old, and she started to speak, in her two nature languages, Spanish and Russian, her mom is Russian and my dad is Colombian, she used to said – Deisy ven! Titta to tam – this sentence is a mixture of three languages, Russian, Spanish and Swedish, I noticed this phenomena as a particular thing because just the people in the home could to understand her. She was using three different languages in the same sentence without a distinction to communicate a diary activity, the first step to be a “semilingual”. Now I start to be reflexive about the language along my own life, not a professional but a common person in this world.