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Published: November 18th 2013
My dear friends,
I am going to take advantage of this blog to let you know about the 14th National Conference at Universidad Javeriana in Bogota, where I was a keynote speaker after a national competition of proposals. My talk was about Lifelong Learning and that was a chance to sort of recap my learning and teaching experience in languages, lucky me, mine was the national winner and that´s how they allowed me to be one of the 6 keynote speakers.
That was a wonderful experience and although I had some problem with my slides due to the sunny light of a day, and the fact that we were not in a confined space. I´d say it was also my fault for not having a contingency plan; anyway, I tried to do my best to tell the audience what was in there, but I reckon that referring to the names of linguists might have been a bit boring, hehe. I just hope they got all from my paper.
What follows in a summary of my talk about Lifelong Learning. At the end, I also put up some photos of other talks on
This was the poster of the conference
which I have on my bedroom as a souvenir of a featresearch projects and a curricular reform. I have to say that I loved the building at la Javeriana, quite nice and inviting. well, enjoy...
14th National ELT Conference: Innovation and professional development in ELT Pontificia Universidad Javeriana Bogota, Colombia. 19 to 21 September 2011
Ponente internacional Franklin Cárdenas González, docente del Instituto de Lenguas y coordinador de Inglés del Programa de Enfermería participó del 19 al 21 de septiembre en la Universidad Javeriana de Bogotá en la versión 14 de la Conferencia Nacional de la Enseñanza del Inglés, organizada por el Consejo Británico, Asocopi, Centro Colombo Americano y siete universidades de esa ciudad. Cárdenas González ofreció una de las seis conferencias centrales del certamen, llamada "Aprendizaje de por vida en la enseñanza y aprendizaje del inglés", en la que "invito a los profesores de lenguas a cambiar algunas formas obsoletas de enseñanza, a aprender a amar su profesión y a formar estudiantes que se interesen por un aprendizaje de por vida y no solamente por las notas de cada periodo académico", dijo. / FOTO SUMINISTRADA
Franklin Cárdenas
Universidad Autonoma de Bucaramanga, Floridablanca, Colombia
A
native Spanish speaker, trilingual, holding a degree in English-French from the University of Pamplona, and an MA in ELT from Thames Valley University in London. He has 18-years teaching experience in countries such as Colombia, En- gland, France and China. The fields he has worked in include tourism, business, health, research and Exam preparation.
He taught English and French in a Colombian secondary school for 4 years; with a British Council scholarship, he assisted Spanish teachers in England. For 7 years, he taught English and Spanish at di- fferent institutions in France. He then taught IELTS at Beijing Normal University, China, for three years through the University of Memphis, US. Back in Colombia, he has been coordinating the ESP Nursing programme at UNAB, as well as teaching English, which he also tea- ches at UIS, and doing research,. He is also an examiner for the British Council (KET, PET and FCE).
Lifelong Learning in Language Teaching and Learning Trend: Lifelong Learning Audience: All September 20th, 15:15-16:15
Our world today inflicts on us, professionals, different requirements that we are to meet if we wish to cope with the demands that
the workplace imposes. (Avis, Fisher, Thompson, 1997. p. 97). Given that this goal pursuit becomes a necessity and not a choice, we are always looking for strategies to enhance our teaching process; as language instructors, we share a number of concerns regarding the choice of the best approach to take to our classrooms. Although it would seem safer to adopt the way we were once taught, as a possible alternative to succeed, the current demands of students and language evolution remind us that stagnation is not advisable; we need to continuously innovate if we want to remain competitive and grow with our beloved students.
Faced with these circumstances, the teacher needs to somehow understand that he is not an island (Wallace, M. 1998, p. 211) and challenge his predetermined beliefs by opting for a thorough appro- ach that allows him to pursue a twofold strategy: that is, to meet his students’ requirements by enhancing his knowledge and, also to improve his performance by both improving his language proficien- cy and adapting his teaching methodology. Therefore, his favoured approach will not only allow him to satisfy his thirst for knowledge but, through constant development, it will enable him
to transmit his infectious enthusiasm to his students.
Lifelong learning then stands out, among other methods, as it offers those opportunities for satisfying the needs described above. By means of an in-depth approach conducive to ongoing development, the teacher will find a reason to gain self confidence in his perfor- mance and engage the students in the achievement of the curricu- lum goals. Due to the fact that he underwent their same learning process, he is able to identify the students’ difficulties more directly and will definitely have more insights into their professional instruc- tional experience, (Harmer, 2001, p. 351).
Lifelong learning encompasses every learning stage in our students’ -and also in our- lives. Not only would we be acquiring knowledge through formal instruction but, by learning new things every day in informal situations (Johnston, R. in Leicester and Field 2000, p. 13), we will be able to inspire our students to adopt permanent learning as their best approach. This would be a perfect strategy to remo- ve some demotivating factors, which according to students, highly affect their learning experience in the Colombian context.
For one, it is not a secret
that our context is not the most appropria- te for learning a foreign language. Other than the classroom, the students have no opportunity to practise the foreign language as they do not feel the need to use it to communicate.
Students also complain about the lack of preparation, bad pronunciation, low pedagogical skills and even very little motivation of some of their foreign language teachers. As a result, they are not willing to invest time in language learning when they do not see their teachers as encouraging models to follow.
Last but not least, English is not regarded as an asset by some institutions; as a matter of fact, students claim to have had a handful of frustrating learning experiences by being taught by teachers who became language professionals “magically”. That is, in order to save money, their institution would delegate the teaching of such a key subject to someone without the minimal skills or required motivation to teach.
As a result, it is not surprising to know that throughout their educa- tion, a great deal of students have acquired ways of thinking that do not favour the work of a
teacher in any way and, what is worse, it makes it even more difficult. But who is there to blame then if, apart from the demotivating factors described above, after 10 years of schooling, their inability to take part in simple conversations in English disorients them a great deal.
As for teachers, they also face some frustrating situations; some are not even inspired to fulfill their crucial role as language instructors. This could be a result of low self-confidence due to their low En- glish proficiency; or it might also be their comfort zone that prevents them from making drastic changes conducive to the betterment of their classroom performance. If we were to link the students’ de- motivating factors to the teacher’s lack of commitment, we would then see that there is ground for improvement and that the adoption of lifelong learning as our favoured approach would be more than welcome.
Personally, I underwent a similar experience; innumerable were the occasions when, due to my poor proficiency skills, I would avoid every opportunity to speak the language; my lessons were limited to a set of structures I was familiar with. Needless to say, the
students were very much affected by this lack of confidence and knowledge. This frustrating experience encouraged me to tackle the matter my- self, and although I have lived abroad for some years, I must confess that it was through my own efforts as a lifelong learner that I was finally able to improve my knowledge and confidence to teach and communicate in English. I am now a teacher who enjoys teaching very much and my lessons -far from being those customary boring and scary rendez-vous with students- are now full of joy, humour and lots of creativity. I only hope that my experience can be taken into consideration by those teachers who, like me, have struggled or are still struggling to fulfill the requirements of foreign language teaching in the Colombian context.
In this presentation, the audience will be given an account of life- long learning, a description of some demotivating factors of stu- dents and teachers, information that I have accumulated through conversations and observations, as well as personal experiences. Using research to put this information into a theoretical framework, I have analysed the situation and have finally come up with a proposal to adopt lifelong
Rehearsing for the talk
Here I have to thank Dilma for listening to me. learning as an effective approach to improve our learning and teaching skills. It is my belief that only when we have inspired our students towards ongoing learning autonomy, and find ourselves constantly examining our teaching performance (Osde- niz, D. in Willis, D. and J. 1996, p. 110-111), that we will understand our true mission as language teachers and will eventually excel at teaching.
Here´s the link, if you want to download the handbook of the conference: https://www.academia.edu/945985/Conference_handbook._14th_National_ELT_conference
References
Avis, J. Fisher, R. Thompson, R. Teaching in Lifelong Learning, A guide to theory and practice , pp 74. OUP
Harmer, J. 2001 The Practice of English Language Teaching, Third Edition, Longman. Essex, England.
Leiceter and Field, 2000. Lifelong Learning, Education Across the Lifespan. Great Britain. TJ International Ltd Padstow, Cornwall.
Wallace, M. 1998. Action Research for English Teachers. Cambridge Teacher Training and Development. Series Editors: Marion Williams and Tony Wright. Cambridge University Press.
Willis D. and J. 1996: Challenge and Change in Language Teaching. Heineman ELT. Oxford.
You can download the handbook for the conference here: http://www.academia.edu/945985/Conference_handbook._14th_National_ELT_conference
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RENanDREW
Ren & Andrew
Very interesting topic, thanks for sharing it with us :)