SOME INTERESTING FACTS AFTER ATTENDING Dr. JULIAN EDGE’S DISSERTATION

By

Leidy Marcela Chacón Vargas

Along his presentation in the “Primer Seminario Internacional en Metodología de la Investigación en Lenguaje y Cultura” Uptc-Tunja, Dr. Julian Edge drew my attention to certain interesting facts in our role as FL teachers. Initially, we can foster some students to perform better, but at the same time we can make some students to stay back. In that sense it is necessary to reflect upon our methodologies as language teachers. How are we reconciling their own identity with the type of activities we ask them to complete? Are we incorporating their objectives rather than ours? To what extent are all of them advancing rather than getting stuck?  

In a second place, Dr. Edge pointed out that it is not a matter of changing students but how we adopt the method to help them to approach a foreign language. It is necessary to respect what learners have in common and the extent to which they are different too; it implies looking at their culture, believes, backgrounds and how through their learning process they are constructing identity. This is closely related to another issue addressed by Dr. which is the adoption of modules that not necessarily fit with our particular contexts; so it is compulsory to determine to what rate some of them work, which ones can be adapted and the most important how to generate our own models from our reality and overall from the reality that the students are facing. In the same way the dissertation let me thought about the relationship between memorization and FL learning. How can we approach this strategy and take advantage of it in our teaching practices? What is the place that it must take in the classroom as part of students’ learning styles?

Finally, these previous facts made me look at my role as the teacher in the classroom and how it is dealing with my students’ individuality, performance, strategies and identity; as well as the methodology I am following and proposing them to boost their learning.  

TO WHAT EXTENT DO I GET CONCERNED ABOUT ETHICS IN RESEARCH?

By

Leidy Marcela Chacón Vargas

Nowadays the ethical issue is not a concern for researchers in areas such as medicine; it is a matter of the social studies too. But to what extent we as teacher-investigators are incorporating ethics in our studies? In order to answer this question I am going to talk from my experience appealing to what has been said by theorists around this field.

On the one hand, authors such as Punch emphasizes on the political and ethical issues that have a place in the development of any research process. In that respect it is mentioned the role of factors like the researcher personality, the nature of the research project, the researcher’s institutional background, and expectations in team research, (1994: 86-87), among others. These aspects have to do with politics in terms of the negotiations that must be approached. Researchers have to deal with power in the different contexts where they perform; sometimes it is not easy to convince people or entities about the nature of their tasks as investigators and to get the needed support. In certain contexts researchers are seen as spies or intruders; so to cope with that the reputation of the researcher, the quality of his investigations, the visibility that he has as well as the clarity of his objectives must be proved. From my own experience these political perils really affect any research process that you want to conduct. In my case the policies of certain institutions have limited me in spite of the fact that I show coherence in my purpose, what I have perceived is that they feel that my purpose is to evaluate or judge them, another aspect is that they do not have a common concept of what research is and implies.

On the other hand Punch (1994) states ethics in research generally has to do with harm, consent, deception, privacy and confidentiality of data. The author says that it is a matter of an ethical code that can be assumed in different ways depending on the researcher and the kind of study he is conducting. For instance he claims: “my position is that a professional code of ethics is beneficial as a guideline that alerts researchers to the ethical dimensions of their work, particularly prior to entry. I am not arguing that the field worker should abandon all ethical considerations once she or he has gotten in, but rather that informed consent is unworkable in some sorts of observational research” (p. 90). To my understanding being ethical when investigating is a matter of clarity in the objectives that I want to achieve and my honesty when communicating them, at the same time it is necessary to make your participants confident about their anonymity and freedom to be part or not of my process.  At the same time in my role as a teacher I have to show them the process that I want to follow considering them as partners rather than clients. It is a cooperative process and as such should be understood.

In that respect Sabar (Undated) and Mohr (1996) agree on ethical statements related to our role as teacher-researchers. They strongly state that research in education cannot become a process of establishing status between the researcher and the researched, but a partnership where the both sides get beneficial.

REFERENCES

Mohr, Marian, (1996) Ethics and Standards for Teacher Research: Drafts and Decisions, conference paper delivered at AERA conference, New York

Punch, Maurice. (1994). Politics and ethics in qualitative research. In Nk Denzin & Lincoln (Eds), Handbook of qualitative research (pp 83-97. Thousand Oak. CA: Sage. Copyright 1994 by Sage. Reprinted by Permission of Sage Publications.    

Sabar, Naama, (Undated) Teacher Researchers' Attitudes Towards Teacher-Informants: Some Ethical Implications, article submitted to the Journal of Teacher Education.

   

REFLECTING ON THE FOLLOWING QUESTION:

“TO WHAT EXTENT NEUROLINGUISTICS HELPS TO RECOGNIZE THE MEANING OF LANGAUGE COMPETENCE?”

By

Leidy Marcela Chacón Vargas

Neurolinguistics becomes a discipline through which the language process in our brain has been studied. The results of that search have brought lights in terms of the lateralization of the brain in two hemispheres, and the injuries related to it. So this discipline is concerned with investigations in language (spoken, signed or written) processes like comprehension, acquisition and production. Peng (1985) explains that Neurolinguistics is a fashionable inter-discipline because of its dual nature (neurology and linguistics),   which at the time allows it to explore and find connections between the brain functioning and the individuals’ linguistic behavior.  

On the one hand the localization of the language process has concrete results with discoveries like those carried out by Brocca and Wernicke in regards to certain brain language domain; however there is still the need to discover whether or not certain areas are involved in the course of language production. On the second hand, language pathology is another topic that Neurolinguistics is facing through the analysis of disorders and breakdowns like aphasia and dyslexia. The interesting fact of these investigations is the powerful reliability of the outcomes in terms of knowledge regarding the integration of areas such as: medicine, engineering, linguistics, psycholinguistics and others that have contributed in the performance of different roles like that one of being a teacher.

At this point, we as educators need to draw our attention to certain aspects, initially what is the conception that we handle about language.  Upon that conception we as teachers build our identity as well as our practices. Additionally, it is highly important to take advantage of the lights turned on by disciplines like Neurolinguistics in order to enrich our performance as educators in the heterogeneous contexts that we must face. It means being able to cope with the issues in language competence that shape our settings.   Of course, it is not an easy task due to the wide range of disadvantages (government policies, quality of education, lack of motivation, etc.) that prevent us to go further and figure out what is going on with our students’ abilities to perform appropriately as a response to the surrounded context; but it is and has to be a must for us as agents of change.

REFERENCE:

·         Peng, F. (1985). What is Neurolinguistics? Journal of Neurolinguistics.

LIKE THE PANTHER BEHIND THE BARS AND ITS DESIRE TO JUMP OUTSIDE THE JAIL TO REDISCOVER THE REALITY: A REFLECTION AROUND “AWAKENINGS”

By

Leidy Marcela Chacón Vargas

THE PANTHER

In the Jardin des Plantes Paris

His vision, from the constantly passing bars, has grown so weary that it cannot hold anything else. It seems to him there are a thousand bars; and behind the bars, no world.

As he paces in circles, over and over,

The movement of his powerful soft strides

Is like a ritual dance around a centre in which a mighty will stands paralysed.

Only at times, the curtain of the pupils lifts quietly- An image enters in, rushes down through the tensed, arrested muscles, plunges into the heart and is gone.

Rainer Maria Rilke (1875)

Awakenings, the visual version of a true story encompasses a group of patients’ situation who are victims of an illness that attacks their brain causing limitations in speech and motricity.

However they like the Panther of the poem are physically captive in the bars of a jail but completely free to imagine, think and perceive what is going on outside.  

So the hardest challenge and the most sensible attitude emerge here: showing them that the outsiders’ eyes can perceive all what they want to draw their attention to. It is precisely what Dr. Sayers does. He discovers through an attentive and devoting engagement, observation and search on their patients’ uniqueness that they are alive, awake, and totally conscious of their reality. He can recognize their individual interests and abilities. That is why he starts looking for strategies to understand them, and their heart images to culminate the process of rediscovering their own reality. Like this group of patients, there are many other people in our societies, immediate communities and classrooms who deserve special attention. Sadly they become confined and isolated in different contexts like the panther that is not able to break the bars by itself and needs the support of someone.

This is totally related to the following excerpt from the movie.   “What we do know is that, as the chemical window closed, another awakening took place; that the human spirit is more powerful than any drug - and THAT is what needs to be nourished: with work, play, friendship, family. THESE are the things that matter. This is what we'd forgotten - the simplest things” (Dr. Sayers). From this point it is possible to say that we teachers as change generators in our contexts should interiorize and start thinking about what to do and how to address situations where our students’ uniqueness with its multiple variables take place. This by means of inclusion and better opportunities for those ones who are the brave panthers trying to go outside the bars that block  their path to experience the world, a experience that has been stolen from them. It is our responsibility to give it back to them.  

It is true that professionals like teachers are not specialists and that this should be a responsibility or duty just for doctors; however teachers are certainly facing educational contexts where disabilities regarding language acquisition and production are taking place. So the big challenge is to take the risk just like Dr Sayers and get training on it looking for “antidotes” that contrast intolerance, indifference and rejectedness towards difference. It is necessary to interiorize Dr. Sayers’ thought, “You'd think at a certain point all these atypical somethings would amount to a typical something”. Then do not give up on you and on your chance to transform the reality and allow others to experience it, the panther needs to run outside.

REFERENCES

Oliver Sacks 1973, 1976, 1982, 1983, 1987, 1990. The revised edition of ‘Awakenings’ is published by Picador.

THE FOXP2 GENE: AN ATTEMPT TO EXPLAIN LANGUAGE DEFICITS FROM A GENETIC PERSPECTIVE

BY
Leidy Marcela Chacón Vargas 

It is clearly observable the increasing interdisciplinary relationship between linguistics and many other areas like genetics in their unfinished effort to decipher the language process development in our brain. In that sense, it has been stated that a gene called “FOXP2” could have implications in the acquisition of the human’s oral language. This possibility is based on the mutation process that the gene involves. This statement is supported by Marcus & Fisher, (2003: 258) when they claim, “it involves multiple associated deficits including articulation difficulties, language problems, and grammatical impairment”. However, here a question emerges, is it possible that a unique gene can be responsible for such circumstances?

Research and various revisions towards this topic have shown that there are specific areas in the brain in charge of different language skills such as the Boca’s area. At the same time contemporary theorists like Pinker,  establishes, “Parece suficientemente demostrada la existencia en el cerebro de zonas específicas en las que se asienta el lenguaje, incluso, las últimas investigaciones parecen apuntar a la posibilidad de regiones dedicadas a procesar información tan específica como los sintagmas nominales o las estructuras métricas” (1994: 344).

What has been previously stated draws our attention to the gene FOXP2 and its abnormal mutation in the brain regions related to the linguistic development and its influence in the activities of the cerebellum which also include motricity.  These notions could open a door to address the language acquisition process through a different perspective that allows linguists, neurologists, doctors, teachers and patients understand what is going on in our brain and find strategies to face and treat such amount of disabilities that certainly affect people and their right to assimilate and experience the world. In spite of the fact that there is still a lack of investigation in this field where the gene FOXP2 is not completely considered as the “Language Gene”, it is surely part of a chain of genes that influences how the language progress in one way or another. 

REFERENCES

Marcus, G. F. and Fisher, S. E. 2003. FOXP2 in focus: what can genes tell us about speech and language? TRENDS in Cognitive sciences Vol. 7 No. 6 257-262.

Pinker, S. (1994). El instinto del lenguaje: cómo crea el lenguaje la mente. Madrid: Alianza