About my me and professional life / Sobre mi  y mi carrera profesional

English in my life

At age 5, and while living in Mexico City, I learned my first English words. My parents sent me to take classes which were given by a Mexican neighbour who had come from the USA. Teacher taught us the names of color, animals, and other groups of things. We used to draw and things like those. The address of our apartment in Mexico city: Sucre 113-1. Colonia Moderna. The primary school I attended had the name in honor to one of the Mexican presidents; "Presidente Plutarco Elías Calles" in the Reforma Iztaccihuatl delegation (Mexico City is divided in seccions called "delegaciones").

At age 8, my family and I moved to the town where my parents were born in the state of Mexico. I lost contact with my classmates and friends from Mexico City.

At age 9, and while living in the State of Mexico, I attended English classes for 2 weeks in a program opened by the primary school "Licenciado Benito Juárez" in Santiago Tianguistenco, Mexico. A major exposure to English would occur during the secondary and preparatory schools.

If you would've asked me how I had kept exposure to language, the answer woul've been; "I used to buy English courses that one could find at the newsstand weekly, every two weeks, or monthly."

During my 3 years of secondary school in my town, the English class was given by only 2 teachers. José Guadalupe was a super teacher who master his subject and who was an inspirational teacher. The other one was very critiziced because of his lack of proficiency in English. Additionally, the latter could have neither pedagogical nor didactic resources that could make him more effecctive while teaching the language.

Teacher José Guadalupe was a good onebecause he was dynamic, knowledgeable, with personality to control groups, friendly. willing to help students, strict, and a basketbal player. And he would play basketball well!

At that age, English became my favourite subject. The best grades I got came from it. 

My life in sports

I have always felt a passion for sports, specially athletics and soccer. I belonged to the athletics team of the Autonomous University of the State of Mexico (UAEMéx).  At that time, I studied a career in Chemistry at the "Facultad de Ciencias Químicas de la UAEMéx", but I would quit because of my goals in athletics. I would train every day in the stadium of the university for amost 3 years. Our coach's name José Socorro Neri of Ocoyoacac, México. He was a professional runner who participated in Olympic Games like those held in Mexico in 1968.

One of the most worderful things that I must thank athletics is the fact that it was the medium or via to visit other places in Mexico and abroad. At the same time, I met many people because doing sports helps you to socialize with other people.

Athletics would take me to take a Phisycal Education career in Mexico City and, later, I worked as a physical education teacher in secondary and preparatory schools. Taking some advantages of my physical condition and by the knowledge I got from the training courses in soccer, I referee soccer games in different leagues of Mexico and USA.

Visit to the USA

Because of the sports activities, in which I was immersed, I had the opportunity to go to the USA. There, I realized that the English language that we, Mexicans, learn in Mexico, specially, in the area of Mexico City and Toluca, is not at all good as to understand it when coming from native speakers.

I remember one of the most frustrating moments dealing with English; it happened the day I entered a McDonalds in Oklahoma, USA. When I asked for what I was going to have, I could make myself understood, but when the McDonalds employee operating a cash register, and who was an Afro-American, talked to me, I couldn't understand anything. 

Speech phenomena, which is part of everyday conversations among speakers, seemed very distant form me at that time. I came back to Mexico very frustrated of my level of listening in English, but at the same time I had made a new discovery during my staying in the USA; the existence of symbols that are used to represent the sounds of languages. Woo-hoo!!!

Visit to Canada

In 2002, I was invited by one of my sisters to Canada. I accepted to go because of the importance of knowing the Canadian culture. I realized that Canadians are friendly people. Canada is formed by people born in different countries who apply to get a Canadian citizenship. Canada is a multicultural country. Nowadays, I know that Canada supports multiculturality. 

Teaching training course

For some time, I was looking for programs that coul help me to get a diploma that supported me as an English teacher and so get a job. I visited some known schools in Mexico, but unfortunatelly, they had no courses for training teachers at that moment. It seemed to me that there are not much interest on create programs like that.

One day, I received a telephone call telling me that one of the branches of Harmon Hall language schools had recently opened a course. I immediately went to the school to apply for it not before they made me take a TOEFL test to check if my English level was good enough to be accepted. During the course, I detected that programs for trainign teachers are not good at all and that some teachers are not trained at all to guide this courses. Additionaly, I felt that a course like that could be better if the contents would've been updated or adapted to the specific coditions of our teachers and students.

At the end of the course, we worked on a final project. It consisted in presenting a collection of activities which would be printed and revised by our teacher or someone else. I think that it was an unnecessary expense because our activities were never checked out or revised and we never received comments or feedback about our final project. If you had looked at  the type of work we did in our final projects, you would have said that more training and reading should've been required.

Looking for a job

Instead of looking for the reasons why my level of undertstanding English was not good, I started looking for job positions as an English teacher. Schools would not accept me because of my curriculum included only professional experience as a physical educator but it didn´t  include experience in Pedagogy or Didactics in teaching languages. 

Decided  to confirm if my hypothesis was correct; Is speaking comprehension one of the most difficult problems for students of English?  I ended taking an 8-month teachers course at Harmon Hall near Toluca, México. I entered this course for two main reasons; first, to find an answer to my hypothesis. Second, to get a diploma to get a job as an English teacher. Unfortunatelly, I couldn't find a scientific answer for it.

I started teaching English in private and public schools in the State of Mexico where I could observe that my students have also difficulties to understand audios where native speakers converse among them. Their not understanding would make me think that more work should be done on pronunciation, but how?

Statrting a Bachelor's degree in Teaching Languages.

The reasons above took me to study English with a more professional vision. I sat the University admision test for the Bachelor's degree in Teaching English.I was accepted in the career called Licenciatura en Enseñanza del Inglés para Maestros en Activo, an online program offered by the UAEMéx. The career lasted 3 years and a half. My dissertation was related to Phonology. I thought thatwriting and talking about it could help me to understand more of the listening problems when learning English. As a matter of fact, it was the corner stone that opened my mind in the academic world alhough with many drawbacks during my studies because of my poor comprehension strategies. So sad!

Tittle of my disertation to get the degree in the BA in Teaching English / Título de la tesina de licenciatura

"Phonetic symbols that make a positive influence in the reach of a normative English pronunciation in the English classes for students of the third grade of public secondary schools."

Master's in Applied Linguistics

In 2014, I applied for the MA in Applied Linguistics, but I failed. I know that the failure I commited was on the section of writing where we had to talk about 3 topics realted to the Linguistics field. In the year 2015, I tried the entrance exam and I finally passed it. 

October 2016. The program is divided in 4 semesters. The most important project for this program is the thesis.  

Semester I: Fonética y fonología / Teorías de adquisición y aprendizaje de lenguas/ Diseño y selección de materiales didácticos/ Metodología de la investigación.

Semester II: Morfosintáxs/ Evaluación/ Enseñanza de lenguas extranjeras/ Estrategias y técnicas de investigación.

Semester III: Semántica y pragmática/ Sociolingüística/ Teoría y diseño curricular/ Formación de profesores/ Seminario de tesis I.Semester IV: Lingüística contrastiva/ Temas selectos/ Análisis del discurso aúlico/ Seminario de tesis II. 

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When you go to the university, you learn if you have learning strategies as well as strategies for reading comprehension. If you don't have those strategies, you have to struggle to find them quickly because teachers hardly ever share with you the way they learn. At least, I have never known a teacher who shares that way. So, I like to be a person who discovers the ways by myself. I share them with people, of course.