Some reflections about the conflict of Education in Chile

The last 3 months there’s been a big revolution from students demanding improvement in Chilean educational system.

What began as a great movement has become a headache for all citizens and the strength and basis of the demands have been lost.

Lexical Approach according to Hugh Dellar… and me

During his third visit at the Instituto Chileno Norteamericano Hugh Dellar discussed the Lexical Approach in a meeting with the students and teachers of the Instituto Profesional Chileno Norteamericano – IPCHN.

This time I didn’t have the chance to do an interview as I did last year, since his agenda was really tight, but I participated in his talked that was, as usual, really interesting and full of practical examples.

Are you surprised by English SIMCE results?

I’m not. These results just showed our reality and if someone is surprised is because is completely out of business.

Here you have some data of SIMCE 2010.

The benefits of learning a foreign language

There are lots of contradictory researches about this topic but it is something that we have to read about and learn about from our own experiences. Now I will focus on the benefits of learning English as a foreign language.

In 2007 I wrote about how to teach English nowadays. I still think the same. Teaching English is not teaching just the language but the culture. Why? Because the understanding of another culture expands people’s horizons. The common arguments for learning English in our country are “getting a better job” or “for traveling”. And it’s true. English is in full development, and knowing or not knowing the language markedly increased the difference between those who can and cannot seize the opportunities of globalization. But we cannot focus just on that. There are many other benefits.

What is bilingualism?

There are several definitions of bilingualism. According to Merriam Webster Dictionary, bilingualism is the ability to speak two languages; the frequent use (as by a community) of two languages; the political or institutional recognition of two languages.

Focus on education, bilingualism could be described in different ways according to the function or used given to this concept. Cazden and Snow (1990) pointed out bilingual education is “a simple label for a complex phenomenon.” According to Baker (2001), bilingual education refers to education in more than one language, often encompassing more than two languages.

To analyze and reflect about bilingualism we have to revise all this definitions and models as a started point.

To be or not to be … bilingual

Bilingualism has been a national issue the last years. Everybody is concerned about the opportunities that we are losing because just the 3% of the population is able to communicate in English properly.

Is bilingualism the solution? What do we have to do to become a bilingual country? There have been many public and private initiatives that have contributed to improve English in our country, like the English Opens Doors Program of the Ministry of Education or CORFO Scholarships. But sometimes I think that we have to do more to advance faster.

English SIMCE… is it going to help? – Second part

I was in IATEFL-TESOL Conference last Friday when we finally knew something about the English test that is going to be applied to our high school students this year.  

Now we know which test will be applied, the date, the grade and the skills that will be measured.

 

The test chosen was TOEIC Bridge from ETS which will be applied to 11^th graders nation wide in October. Let’s talk about the characteristics of this test, its strengths and weaknesses.

 

 

English SIMCE… is it going to help?

In the last presidential speech Sebastián Piñera announced the implementation of an English test for SIMCE this year.

According to the presidential speech “To accomplish the goal to transform Chile in a bilingual country (…), we need to know where we are and how we are progressing (source: Prensa Presidencia, www.prensapresidencia.cl).

Digital Storytelling

Last week I had the honor to meet Cathy Healy who visited Chile sponsored by the USA Embassy in Santiago. She is a reporter and novelist, currently working for the National Geographic. Cathy visited the BNC where I work to offer a workshop about Digital Storytelling.

But what is Digital Storytelling? It is a new way of narrative. Telling stories using images, pictures, sounds, music combined in a way to show the mood and feelings of the narrator.

I have worked using technology in the classroom; I have seen how technology is used by different teachers in several places. But this is something really powerful. 

Let’s see an example.

Tales of passion by Isabel Allende

 What is passion?

For me passion is life. If you do something without passion you don’t accomplish anything. 

Any goal, challenge, wish and task has to be conducted by passion, even in the smallest detail. I’ve seen passion in artists, teachers, women, politicians… and it is always the same, they get their goals and somebody else’s goals.  But unfortunately I haven’t seen passion very frecuently because is not easy. Sometimes people don’t understand the enthusiasm and energy that is put on an enterprise to be achieve. Even family and friends don’t understand them. So passioned people’s life is sometimes kind of solitaire.

I invite you to watch this video from TED talk site of Isabel Allende. Here she tells a story where combine humor, tragedy and passion into a speech that calls on all of us to make the world a “good” place.

About Isabel Allende

Novelist Isabel Allende writes stories of passion. Her novels and memoirs, including The House of the Spirits and Eva Luna, tell the stories of women and men who live with passionate…

To read more about her visait her website on Isabel Allende’s Website

Author and activist Isabel Allende discusses women, creativity, the definition of feminism — and, of course, passion — in this talk.

Isabel Allende’s Talk