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.