UPEL-IPM

WE ONLY USE A FEW WORDS OUTSIDE

A week ago I was sitting listening to a report in a “Speak Up!” magazine, when three students greeted each other near me. They talked among themselves and said: Hi my friend! – What’s up?. I smiled a little, but then my ears hurt when I heard: Todo bien mi panita - ¿Cómo está la geva ? Chévere chamo...Then. No hablen de ella que no me cae, Shut up now!, the girl said.

In 2001, I took my first English course out of U.P.E.L. What I learnt first in that course wasn’t a lesson, but I had a meeting with all the teachers. They said what were the disadvantages we’d have when learning English in that place. To study it as a foreign language was one of those disadvantages. Something similar happens here. I mean that out of our AUFINS everybody speaks Spanish therefore we can’t get native accents, idioms and new expressions easier. On the other hand, to study English as a second language would let us the opportunity to interact with native speakers in a real English environment. I think it depends on what kind of students we are. By that time, the meeting was important because it was the first time I heard about it.

Nowadays, for many students it is boring when a teacher advises them about building a new and different English world in order to improve their own English. I began here at U.P.E.L in 2003. Since then, I’ve heard teachers talking about those disadvantages that my old teachers taught me in my small town. Most English teachers here care about their students. I have seen some of them a little angry trying to make us realize that we need to practice. Once I heard from one of them this: “ No practice, no learning- no learning no improvement, so if you don’t want to improve yourselves get out of this university”. We can go out and find a good pedagogic method with the best teachers and learn English, but if we keep our self-esteem low, we’ll never know what is to communicate in English. If we want we can, if not, no matter the university or institute’s quality we’d never learn.


Close your eyes take a long breath and imagine Mr. Rico, his cooks, Mrs. Ortiz, popular “Milca” and her co-workers, I mean, all of them talking in English. Now build a big wall around our program. I invite you to go inside that magic world talking in English more than ten hours trying to live, hear, eat, feel and think, but in English.

I must tell you that the author loves Spanish. I’m sure you all too but we have to see the real life and realize we are learning a foreign language. So we must build our own English universe. I write we must because it is the best way to succeed. Students cannot pretend to get always ten only by taking fifteen hours in class per week. The worst is that some of us only talk for eight or less minutes from those fifteen hours per week.

When we see we failed in some tests our vocabulary increases just to start saying, in English of course: We have the worst teachers! I do not understand him! He is crazy! I do not know why she is teaching here! I know more than he does! She hates me, so I will not succeed! Finally, we decide to leave the career, but WHY? The answer to that question is, English Sucks and they don’t know anything about teaching. I do not know what you think my dear partners, but I have seen how some teachers, not the English ones, who prefer to teach English students than students from other programs. That happens because when we are taught in this program to learn the language, we grow ethically too.

We always think that to let an advanced student to listen to us is embarrassing. I have talked to some of them and they neither punched me nor ate me. Maybe I hurt their ears when I started talking like a parrot. It does not matter. Some weeks ago in a course that was called Shall we read? It was amazing to share some words with Mr. Carlson. It was great to have the opportunity to hear advanced students’ ideas, point of views and their meekness. The most important of all was to experience how through the course I could lift my self-esteem and the little fear I had disappeared. Imagine! Only one classmate and I were from English five. The rest were teachers and the best advanced students. I was so nervous when I had to say a poem with some others students besides me the first day.

To have a good Self-esteem doesn’t mean to beat someone else with bad words or to say we are the best. Self-esteem is to realize we can be better today than yesterday but worse than tomorrow. It is to know our capacities and skills and to accept our weaknesses. When a teacher talks about it we think it is true. Then that information and advices our teachers gave us just come out of our brains. We waste time gossiping, critizising and arguing with all people who pass by us. So I am writing to invite you to continue gossiping, discussing, arguing, greeting, smiling, seeing, hearing, walking, tasting, crying and even breathing but please in English!!!

WRITTEN BY: Rhonny Gabriel Medina Liendo
E-Mail: rgmlobl@hotmail.com
allgabrielnews@yahoo.com

UPEL-IPM V SEM