MWP. Writing and thinking

Based on my personal experience, I could say that they both are in a tight linking. Essentially, writing is the process in which thoughts and words are immortalized. Writing is a possibility for these ideas to transcend in time and space. Through writing, the ideas cross frontiers and reach people from different cultures in remote places.

It is a dialectical relation: Thinking originates writing, but the process of writing also conditions our way to think. In my personal experience, I have found that writing helps me to arrange properly my thoughts, to put them in order. I have already said that writing is like a soliloquy in which we expose to ourselves a handful of messy ideas that are gradually shaped by an exercise of self-criticism and reflection. Writing also boosts my creativity.

Andrés Bolaño

MWP. Writing in Foreign Languages

Writing in English to me has been a very fruitful experience. It has been the approach to another way to think and perceive the world around me.

Perhaps, the main difficulty I have been through is to fit my “Spanish-shaped” way to think to the grammar, the syntax and the English conventions for writing. When I’m trying to write in English, a lot of ideas come quickly to my head; but the process of putting them down in the paper, in another language, takes more time than I’d expect. This is because I am often not able to “transpose” the codes and conventions to a second language. I already see myself interfered by the way I think in Spanish.

To me, writing in English has been as driving a car. In theory, I know how to start a car. I know what must be done in order to make it advance. But it’s difficult to put it on practice. In English writing, I have the ideas in my head, but it results difficult to write them down.

It is the same in French; if somewhat I feel the writing flows better in French than in English. Writing in French is challenging basically in terms of the idiomatic expressions, but I found French syntax more familiar.

But, despite the complications, something must be said: having my metalinguistic abilities boosted has been a great advantage about writing in other languages.

In order to dodge those difficulties, I have been working on the development of “English thinking” and “French thinking” by the usage of internet and other tools that provide me with the conventions I need for writing.

Writing in Spanish is quite different. It is my mother language. Moreover, because of my experience studying History I have had to write a lot, including essays and reviews. This involves the expression of complex ideas and concepts, in which I have done well. Writing in Spanish to me is like having a deep conversation with myself. By the time I express some ideas, I counter-argument in order to shape my discourse better. Besides, when I am writing, I can feel the ideas emerging from my mind. Sometimes, ideas I did not even know I had. 

Andrés Bolaño

Final draft: Developing critical thinking

Final draft: Developing critical thinking

I first learnt about critical thinking two years ago, while taking a Spanish course in which we were introduced our maximum exponent in this area; Iztanislao Zuleta the maximum critical thinker or philosopher that this university has ever produced. I was amaze by this author, with all his ideas, especially about, philophy, education, learning and the Colombian policies with its politicians.

There is a really close connection between critical thinking and philosophy, it is probably well assumed that all philosophers throughout the thinking history has been the truly, genuine critical thinkers, and they had demonstrated that with a good theory about their life that they had to face they could changed the course of their history and all their contextual history, being the truly revolutionist that had changed their world little by little to the point  where we are at this moment, there for it’s our turn to develop this skill and try to be the modern critical thinkers or philosophers that this critical period of history  is needing now.

Critical thinking (or being a philosopher) is the intellectually disciplined process of actively and skillfully conceptualizing, applying, analyzing, synthesizing, and/or evaluating information gathered from, or generated by, observation, experience, reflection, reasoning, or communication, as a guide to belief and action. In its exemplary form, it is based on universal intellectual values that transcend subject matter divisions: clarity, accuracy, precision, consistency, relevance, sound evidence, good reasons, depth, breadth, and fairness. (By Michael Scriven & Richard Paul for the on Critical Thinking and Education Reform, 1987.)

According these authors, the most important aim of this skill is to be able to belief in ourselves as well of being capable to take actions in order to make things better, fear and justice for all.

Critical thinking (or being a philosopher) is self-guided, self-disciplined thinking which attempts to reason at the highest level of quality in a fair-minded way.  People who think critically consistently attempt to live rationally, reasonably, empathically. 

Everyone thinks; it is our nature to do so. But much of our thinking, left to itself, is biased, unshapely, partial, uninformed or down-right prejudiced. Yet the quality of our life and that of what we produce, make, or build depends precisely on the quality of our thought. Poor thinking is costly; both in money and in quality of life, there for, good quality thinking should bring good quality life.

 Excellence in thought, however, must be systematically cultivated; it implies effective communication and problem solving abilities and a commitment to overcome our native egocentrism and sociocentrism.

Having cleared out what means to develop critical thinking and how I started with it. I would like to make a critical reflection and share to my English VII course my currently situation as student in the didactic I, another course that I was taking in this semester.

This current critical course, Didactic I course, that I was taking, “was canceled”, it was the more reliable sample of arbitrariness, in which the school has reached in the highest academic life levels, in our school of language sciences. That is, the current administrative system of the undergraduate program in foreign languages, with its accreditation quality is in process.

In relation to its accreditation process in high quality international standards without any relationship or affiliation with the students point of view.  Moreover, they have answered to the demands made by students by “cancelling the course”, as it was the only solution or maybe as retaliation against the emergence of a deep desire to restore and change this school crises, that the school is passing at this time, students are not as they used to be, they demand to be treated as critical, analytical, being able to transform their social reality.

This fact smells pretty bad, it allows to affirm that is not criticism and analysis the guiding principles of the school of linguistics, something already known, but with this situation is absolutely proven. So what does a school that says they are critical and analytical, supporting a decision like this? This allows us then to argue that there are other principles that drive the actions of the school.

Now, who canceled this didactic I course? The faculty of the School of Language Sciences? The director of the degreed program? This is the same school that aims to move forward a certificate of quality, regardless of their  only reason; the well  being of the students, today the called didactic I course and 13 other courses with similar irregularities. How it can be understood that this course has been canceled, leaving 25 students sentenced to the postponement of his professional degree for over three more semesters?

What will come from the school? Washes hands: as has been done for many semesters against students' requests, pleasantly watching as more and more students thicken academic dropout statistics. And then say that nothing could be done against this critical situation of the school and the didactic I course. The only goal of the school should be student resurgence over political selfish and petty interests of a few.

Concluding all these ideas, I would like to rephrase, Paulo Freire, Education should raise the awareness of the students so that they become subjects, rather than objects, of the world. This is done by teaching students to think democratically and continually questioning, making critically meaning views from everything they learn and live.

There for our language school should focused  in not only at teaching languages but also teaching critical thinking skills, making out their students others philosopher with enough critical thoughts that enable them to make, a better school,  a better society, a better world.  This should be the real purpose of this our school.

By: Alexis Herrera Monsalve.

Thinking and writing final draft

Thinking & writing

They are very well relate, in a very unique way, they cannot exist separately, one without the other; they are like the sun and the life in our planet earth, where the sun is the thinking and the life on earth is the writing, as the sun gives light and life to the planet, the thinking gives life to the writing, therefore there isn't any writing without thinking, as well as there isn't any thinking without reading. Now we got a third one in the equation thinking plus reading equals writing. Consequently there isn't any writing without reading and thinking before.

And by reading I mean understanding everything in a very holistic form, it's not just to read any printed source, but to trying to understand and communicate with everything and everybody in each and every second of our life. There for I think then I communicate or like a famous author ones say, “Think therefore I exist. (Emanuel Kant).

Writing in three different languages

Writing in English is like making a stop and pause for a good period of time reflecting about something, and it's the same when I write in my own language (Spanish), but writing in French is another whole world because I still leaning it, therefore it takes me a lot of time to come up with something at least grammatically correct.

My possible subject for my first writing project could be:

Critical thinking: because it's it attracts my attention very much and think it's very useful for my career.

My contribution to the review of the article

Barbara's two section of classes

First class

-Write one page summary about Raymond William's essay

-Write three questions about

-The audience for the summary was a hypothetical absent student

-She gives to the students a list of effective summaries in specified context

-Homework was to get copies for the whole class of the summary and questions that they did

Second class

-Divided the class into two groups, each group with one part of the essay making discussion about it, developing join understanding

-Unified the class and present their thought to the rest of the class

-Form a discussion about with the questions that they did

- Collect all summaries distributing them for peer critique,

I think this is a very effective way of involving the students in their writing assignments, and it makes them more aware of what they think and write. Or as the author say developing disciplinary authority or being part or citizen of a determinate academic discipline.

¨ A TEACHER¨ EDUCATION

¨A TEACHER¨EDUCATION

Teacher education refers to the policies and procedures designed to equip prospective teachers with the knowledge, attitudes, behaviors and skills they require to perform their tasks effectively in the classroom schools and wider community. This is a short definition of the role that a teacher has. Been a teacher it is something that happens and sometimes you were not imagining that it happens or that probably you never thought that will be your realityThere are some steps that you have to make, for being a qualified teacher.

First, there is an initial teacher training / education (a pre-service course before entering the classroom as a fully responsible teacher);

Second, there is an induction (the process of providing training and support during the first few years of teaching or the first year in a particular school);

Third teacher development or continuing professional development (CPD) (an in-service process for practicing teachers).

Those are some of the important and basic steps in which every future teacher must carry out for an excellent preparation, without count the thousands of hours of study and preparation, which must have to initiate with the development of his knowledge and learning, in order that likewise it could transmit this knowledge to those that do not possess, take their students from the darkness of ignorance to the light of knowledge, and the key personnel in the institutions who play an important role to bring about this transformation are teachers. Teacher education encompasses teaching skills, sound pedagogical theory and professional skills. Teacher Education = Teaching Skills + Pedagogical theory + Professional skills.

This it is one of the realities in which, every human being, that is ready to be a teacher must face, each of these challenges that they carry to be a teacher, and we can take as example that one of the virtues that every teacher has to have is  patience, to be able to handle numerous or big groups, to teach hundreds of students with physical characteristics and totally different behaviors, this act of deciphering which is the best way or forms of teaching him each of these students, to be able to sow this seed of knowledge in them.

As stated by NCTE (1998) in Quality Concerns Teacher Education, ―The teacher is the most important element in any educational program. It is the teacher who is mainly responsible for implementation of the educational process at any stage.

According to the International Encyclopedia of Teaching and Teacher education (1987), ―Teacher education can be considered in three phases: Pre-service, Induction and In-service. The three phases are considered as parts of a continuous process.

This information is probably so basic  of what concerns to be a teacher and the education that every teacher must have, being a teacher is not just be standing up in front of students and to teach any type of topic to them, to evaluate them and to give them any type of class.  being teacher is to teach not only a topic, is to teach values, is to try to direct every student in order that it develops a brilliant and thinking mind, and that all that learned demonstrates in his diary live.

Second version of my PWP

Plurilinguism within the family, language acquisition problems

Andreinna Delgado Ricci    

Nowadays, languages of all kinds and origins are becoming a social requirement for different purposes. That phenomenon of globalisation, in which the whole world have shared and interact itself in order to increase human activity and interchange worldviews, products, ideas and, in general, culture, have promoted the expansion of plurilinguism. The plurilinguism is the use of three or more languages for a single speaker or a community. A clear reason why plurilinguism appears in children is when a couple, each of them native speakers of different languages, decide to establish themselves as a family in another country with a third different language. In that case, their children are going to experience the plurilinguism. Two mother tongues, belonging to the parents and a second language spoken in the environment they growing up.  

In the previous case exposed we can also find the interculturality between the people that belong to that nuclear family. Any language represents not only a group of signs we can decode and reproduce. It is also included the culture, which is, in the same way as the symbols and signs, a very important characteristic of a language.

Now, talking about the acquisition of three or more different languages at the same time in early childhood, in cases as the one presented before, there are some problems that can emerge in that process due to the quantity of grammatical systems, vocabulary, phonetic, among others, trying to be acquired for the child.

The purpose of my personal writing project is to describe and show to the reader some of the consequences of being exposed to the acquisition of multiple languages at the same time in the early childhood; how we can avoid the issues that appear in those cases and how we can promote the plurilinguism in the child, which is not considered something negative, without further language acquisition problems.
I'm going to support myself in academic articles related to the acquisition of several languages simultaneously among children of immigrant families and theory about the language acquisition process which is included in the field of psycholinguistics, branch of the linguistic that study the psychological and neurobiological factors that enable humans to acquire, use, comprehend and produce language, something I personally find very interesting and useful for my professional training as a future language teacher.

First draft of my MWP

Writing and Thinking

Writing… is the perfect language for “Occidental Civilization”. There you can use the grammatical rules of the language, you can organize your ideas in order to do not be repetitive…. And if I say it is the perfect language it is because a text, a piece of writing lets you use all the language components and only as the result of wanting to do it but because it is mandatory for the audience to understand. It does not matter how much you say you do not write for other, that you write for yourself… that is not true. We write to understand ourselves but overall, we write for letting people know what we think. And at the end all we do is thinking… also when writing.

Comparison of Writing in Different Languages.

For me writing in English is like when I want to go to swim but I do not have time. So I just go because I really want to.

Writing in French is like eating a pasta dish. I love it so much, I do not want it to finish.

Writing in Spanish is like climbing a mountain. I do it as a challenge. I know I can put all my native language knowledge on and write a good sentence, at least.

Internet Lingo; a new form of non verbal communication?

Ten years ago when Internet was not yet a vital part of our mass media, conversations outside the physical space were only possible through telephone and letters. By these media was difficult to express our feelings as we did in a face to face conversation, because there was not space to gestures and tone of voice that always have strengthened our message.

David Crystal (2005) express that the advent of the Internet has revolutionized communication in many ways; it changed the way people communicate and created new platforms with far-reaching social impact. Significant avenues include but are not limited to SMS Text Messaging, e-mails, chatgroups, virtual worlds and the Web.

With the appearance of these mass media, the non-verbal communication is presented through emoticons, internet lingo known as slang or acronyms, memes and pictures that beginning to reinforce the written message. Florencia Morado (2003) express that Nonverbal communication is replaced in a highly stylized form but, above all, creative. It describes actions or physical reactions, moods, feelings with a symbology created from keyboard characters that have been re-signified.

This new mode of language is interesting to study because it is an amalgam of both spoken and written languages. For example, traditional writing is static compared to the dynamic nature of the new language on the Internet where words can appear in different colors and font sizes on the computer screen (Franklin Cook, 2001). Moreover is interesting because as teachers in training, we have to know how currently students are communicating, in order to understand their social environment and take the most of these elements to create an education according to their interests that make them enable to learn willingly. 

My interest in this topic is to see how the use of the Internet Lingo helps us to express our feelings by only some keyboard characters put in a special form, acronyms created to express certain situations and even pictures that just seeing them, express moods. Clearly is a new form of communication that needs to be studied because in some years probably this will be a very important topic in linguistics. I think this topic may be interesting for my colleagues and for anyone that does not know the topic but also think that is important to know this new form of communication. I hope to find important information by investigating in written documents about this topic and asking to some of my friends what they think about.

Developing critical thinking

Developing critical thinking

Critical thinking is the intellectually disciplined process of actively and skillfully conceptualizing, applying, analyzing, synthesizing, and/or evaluating information gathered from, or generated by, observation, experience, reflection, reasoning, or communication, as a guide to belief and action. In its exemplary form, it is based on universal intellectual values that transcend subject matter divisions: clarity, accuracy, precision, consistency, relevance, sound evidence, good reasons, depth, breadth, and fairness. (By Michael Scriven & Richard Paul for the on Critical Thinking and Education Reform, 1987.)

According these authors, the most important aim of this skill is to be able to belief in ourselves as well of being capable to take actions in order to make things better, fear and justice for all.

Critical thinking is self-guided, self-disciplined thinking which attempts to reason at the highest level of quality in a fair-minded way.  People who think critically consistently attempt to live rationally, reasonably, empathically. 

Everyone thinks; it is our nature to do so. But much of our thinking, left to itself, is biased, unshapely, partial, uninformed or down-right prejudiced. Yet the quality of our life and that of what we produce, make, or build depends precisely on the quality of our thought. Shoddy thinking is costly; both in money and in quality of life, there for, good quality thinking should bring good quality life.

 Excellence in thought, however, must be systematically cultivated; it implies effective communication and problem solving abilities and a commitment to overcome our native egocentrism and sociocentrism.

Having done this definition I would like to share or communicate my currently situation as student in the didactic I, another course that I was taking in this semester.

The current critical, Didactic I course, that I was taking, “was canceled”, it was the more reliable sample of arbitrariness, in which the school has reached in the highest academic life levels, in our school of language sciences. That is, the current administrative system of the undergraduate program in foreign languages, with its accreditation quality is in process.

In relation to its accreditation process in high quality international standards without any relationship or affiliation with the students point of view.  Moreover, it has been resolved the request made by students by “cancelling the course”, as it was the only solution or maybe as retaliation against the emergence of a deep desire to restore and change this school crises, that the school is passing at this time, students are not as they used to be, they demand to be treated as critical, analytical, being able to transform their social reality.

This fact smells pretty bad, it allows to affirm that is not criticism and analysis the guiding principles of the school of linguistics, something already known, but with this situation is absolutely proven. So what does a school that says they are critical and analytical, supporting a decision like this? This allows us then to argue that there are other principles that drive the actions of the school.

Now, who canceled this didactic I course? The faculty of the School of Language Sciences? This is the same school that aims to move forward a certificate of quality, regardless of their  only reason; the well  being of the students, today the called didactic I course and 13 others with similar irregularities. How it can be understood that this course has been canceled, leaving 25 students sentenced to the postponement of his professional degree for over three more semesters?

What will come from the school? Washes hands: as has been done for many semesters against students' requests, pleasantly watching as more and more students thicken academic dropout statistics. And then say that nothing could be done against this critical situation of the school and the didactic I course. The only goal of the school should be student resurgence over political selfish and petty interests of a few.

Concluding all these ideas I would like to rephrase, Paulo Freire, Education should raise the awareness of the students so that they become subjects, rather than objects, of the world. This is done by teaching students to think democratically and continually questioning, making critically meaning views from everything they learn and live.

By: Alexis Herrera Monsalve.

HUMOR IN CLASSROOM INTERACTION

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Most of the time we underrate the humor, ironically, underline it like something little serious, thus make us to relegate it without give it it real status in the discourse. Delia Chiaro and Neal R Norrick express this topic through their book, where they say that humor is a fundamental ingredient of our social behaviour and traditions of humor research exist in modern psychology, anthropology, literary criticism, sociology, medicine and even computer science. “humor in interaction” presents new findings in verbal humor research from conversational and interactional perspective.

They concentrate on the ways humor functions in conversation and base their research on recorded dialogues and other data (e.g. narratives) drawn from talks in different settings. The idea underlying all contributions is that humor is a specific multifunctional mode of discourse. They argue that, because humor constitutes an important part of our everyday interaction, it is promising to apply methods of conversational analysis to humorous communication.

Besides, Linda E. Francis in her work, suggest that humor is a social phenomenon and serves and important purpose in interaction. Linda´s work offers the following definition as an analytical tool: humor as emotion management is an expert cultural performance.

In addition to Duke R. Kelly work, we live in a digital age where on line, electronic relationships are increasing and many students spend an increasing number of hours in front of the computer, video game system or television. these activities, often enjoyed by children, do not readily promote direct human contact even in a school environment, causing a real problem of interaction between the students and teacher and between the students themselves.

Due to this connection between the people in the classroom is important to learning, the tool implemented during this study was the use of humor in the learning environment. To some, the use of humor may seem awkward or even inappropriate in a "serious"learning environment and its implementation may not be easy. This is normal according to Caine and Caine who say, "The dance between letting go of old beliefs and taking on a new way of thinking and perceiving is delicate and complex" (Cain and Cain, 1995, p. 47). this study shows, however, that the use of humor in the classroom, not only benefits the students, but the teacher as well. learning should be, "an enjoyable, challenging, and, yes, entertaining activity just like learning a video game is" (tapscott, 1998, 147).

As a conclusion, I could say that we have an strong tool to make the difference, is true that is a different way to face the classroom problems, but is not a secret that while there is a constat change in the students and classroom ennvironment, we have to find the best way to deal with it. 

TIC´S IN THE CLASSROOM

A new kind of student it’s been shaped  in daily activities, since they wake up to each morning, technology is building new logical references, new ways of thinking and developing knowledge to learners, a global net-word, a mass multi-media stimulus is continuing throwing any kind of information to people, this interrelated activity, so fast, so massive,  is dulling people cognition, as well as creating new kind of phenomenon at classrooms, learners attention is being diminish and classrooms development is going through an obstacles’  marathon.

But technology and its devices is not only a mere core of difficulties, it is also an open wide multidimensional field of possibilities, its swiftness to access to the global library, in which there is not only written materials but also any kind of media resources to enrich the learning experience, it is an opportunity to teachers to build functional contexts of learning, the dialogical relation teacher-learner it’s being mediated by a potential instrument which could be turned into a helpful tool or into a mass-destruction weapon.

Teachers as negotiator, in this epistemological relation, must enhance the educative possibilities of TICS, a careful study about the different academic applications of technologies is now giving to teachers as well as students new perspectives of how technology is turning classrooms into real contexts of learning.

Rosa Huertas: Writing in different languages, relationship between writing and thinking

Writing in different languages

(Micro written practice)

“Writing in English is the most ingenious torture ever devised for sins committed in previous lives. The English reading public explains the reason why.” James Joyce quotes (Irish novelist, 1882-1941)

I already explored what it means writing in English for me, and the amazing thing is that I still believed is like to ride a horse, because even though I don’t know how to do it I like it, and I feel afraid of do it, because I think that although I try to improve it I never reach the level I want to have, In both I feel a little comfortable, but not quite at all. The freedom is limited by fear and insecurity of doing wrong, of being wrong, of mockery, of falling. Anyway sometimes I take the risk of trying, and in those times of trying the excitement and adrenaline dampen that fear. So I keep on rode through the English words.

French script for me in is kind of complicated, maybe so much as waking up early in the mornings, the sensation of feeling close the Monday, or worse, waking up early on Mondays and feeling not myself well, sometimes I think it is strange, because is kind of a new beginning, but is also the responsibility of doing things, realize different duties and obligations, queuing at banks, standing on the bus for an hour or more, feeling the heat and fatigue of the noon. I don’t feel comfortable writing in French I hope to learn it somehow, but right now I am not so good at it.

Spanish is so different to me, obviously because is my mother language, It flows very easy, but I want to clarified that I not an expert just because is my mother language. Writing in Spanish for me is like to imagine flying between yellow and blue butterflies, I can become dreams, illusions in real just by writing, is like a magic carpet that allows me to travel wherever I want. I just like that.

Relationship between writing and thinking

(Micro written practice)

There are many human process that are interconnected each other, that of course are really important to make physical things happen, but all star in with a mental process: to think then to do it. In that case writing follows the thinking process. Anything that is written must be thinking first, or twice. But is not an easy process, even when the idea is on the mind is difficult to write it.

second version of my PWP

Universidad del Valle

Licenciatura en Lenguas Extranjeras

Composición escrita en Inglés VII

Profesora:  Sol colmenares

Estudiante: Leidy Yareth Martínez López

Critical review of the introduction of “CRITICAL PERIOD IN SECOND LANGUAGE ACQUISITION”

I would like to set first the topic I am going to talk about; it is the theory of critical period in learning a second language. I chose this topic because I believe this is vastly but not completely developed issue in learning a second language and it could generate some ideas about how to improve learning a new language in adults and how different could it be from learning in childhood. I found that some experts have made lots of research about the critical period but they argued that this period could end at different ages. I will mention those experts and the time in life they believe the critical period concludes later.

In my text I have selected just the introduction of a study made in the United States by Kenji Hakuta, Ellen Bialystok and Edward Wiley. I decided to analyze only the introduction because this presents for me the base of the research.

This critical review is addressed basically to people who are interested on knowing more about learning processes or learning styles. However, the topic could be interesting for the whole educative community of Second Language Learning and Teaching.

The main purpose of this review is to show the perspective of the mentioned authors about the critical period and my point of view in front of the ideas they present. Besides, I would like to know more about the critical period hypothesis because it can help me understanding my future students’ needs according to their age or cognitive development.

The authors argue the idea that there is a biologically-based critical period for second-language acquisition has appealed to both theorists and social policymakers. That is, language policy has been developed according to this kind of hypothesis and theorists have been looking for a definite answer to this phenomenon.  They also refer to the field in which that hypothesis appeared firstly, it was in neurolinguistic literature by Penfield and Roberts (1959), they speculated that the lack of recoveries from traumas and damages in the brain because of the maturity could go on until second language acquisition.

In this research Hakuta, Bialystok and Wiley expressed that the results of the test they applied demonstrated that proficiency scores declined with increases in age of initial exposure to the second language. Nevertheless, they did not find any specific sign that can lead to the idea that in fact there is a specific age until people can learn or not a new language. I find necessary to say they always talk about acquisition because they have focused on immigrants who are supposed to have acquired the second language instead of have learned it consciously.

These researchers say the claim that there is an age-related decline in the success with which individuals master a second language is not controversial, and they expose two characteristics that must be presented in a critical period: (1) high level of preparedness for learning within a specified developmental period to assure the domain is mastered by the species, and (2) lack of preparedness outside of this period. The second characteristic for the critical period is a theory that involves not only learning a second language but, learning in a general way. In other words that would mean that children or youngers (each theorist has exposed a different limit in age), are more prepared to face a learning process than we adults are.

As I said before, there have been several theorists who tried to develop the critical period hypotheses. Ones of them is Johnson and Newport (1989, 1991) who said that there is a strong age-related decline in proficiency for languages learned prior to puberty (defined as 15 years old) and random variation in achievement among those who are exposed to a second language later in life.  As these scientists, some others have presented a limit of age in which the critical period ends. That is the case of Krashen (1973) who argues that period ends at 5; Pinker (1994) says it is at 6; Lenneberg (1967) says it is at 12 and, as I have already mentioned, Johnson and Newport (1989) say it is at 15. So, my idea by doing this exercise was precisely to show that there is one hypothesis but the issue about the age in which it is supposed the brain has more difficulties to learn is not clear yet.

Besides, and I agree with the authors when they say they realized that within the studied context it is necessary to categorize or have in mind they exist social factors that can easily influence second-language acquisition, the age is one factor but the educative development, language policies within the society and interest or goals sought by the learners are determinant aspects in that process.

Finally, the authors say that they will examine the effect of age of acquisition on second-language proficiency by studying a very large sample of second- language learners who cover a wide range of ages of initial exposure to English. Probably the rate in which Critical period stops is not going to be found at the end of this project because the factor of age and  brain maturity is not  the only factor that counts in learning a new language process. In fact, as I see it, it is just one of the variants that impinge that process and I would not label any of those variants as the most important in that enterprise.

First draft of my PWP

TRANSLATING A TEXT: FACTORS THAT ARE INVOLVED IN THIS PROCESS

Diana Carolina Monedero Solís

 

The translator's objectivity and subjectivity in the process of translating a text (narrative, argumentative, descriptive, etc.) are relevant factors that can affect, positively or negatively, the purpose of the author (writer) and also the sense of the text. This phenomenon can happen because the activity of translating a text involves the translator's knowledge, his/her culture and language, as well as the respect for what has been written in another language (the text). Mariano García-Landa proposed the following definition of translation: “translators reproduce with a second sign system (language) in a second speech act (‘language game’) the percepts produced by other speakers/writers in a first speech act (‘language game’) with a first sign system”¹. This definition bring us to think in the process of getting the sense of the text we want/need translate, and then in the process of finding words in another language to composed the original sense again.

I think this topic is relevant to our field (foreign languages teaching) because as teachers, we need to know how get and keep the sense and the purpose of a text that we or our students need/want to translate. Also, it is relevant because of the material and authors that make part of this study and their theories. Some author as Mariano García-Landa give us new and valuable information about translation and its factors.

My purpose of writing this text, as a personal writing project, is to know the art of translating in order to enrich my knowledge, as well as present to the foreign languages students and teachers some theories and authors in the field. In fact, I am working in some theories and researches about the factors that involve the process of translating a text because this topic is so new for me.

1 García-Landa, M. (2006). On Defining Translation. Meta: Translators' Journal. Volume 51, número 3 , 444.