Post 6: English Language Challenges

Honestly, I'm a little traumatized by English. Before studying geography, I started studying translation in English and Portuguese, but I did so badly with English that I left that career without wanting to know anything about it. Now that I am studying something totally different, it is a burden for me to have to take four English courses anyway, so my experience has not been the best. However, in Fau I have had good and understanding teachers, so it has not really been that difficult or that bad.

I think the use of the blogs has been totally positive. I love blogs and I love writing, in fact I have about three personal blogs where I write about other things. So it has been encouraging to practice my English through something I like to do.

However, since I'm more used to writing, I think I'm lame with the oral part of English, since I have a hard time expressing myself orally, and I also need to sharpen my bilingual ear, but for that I basically need to practice in everyday conversations. For that I plan to travel and find myself obliged to speak English in order to communicate.

Outside of class, I use English very little, I only use it when I listen to music in English or when I watch series that I see with subtitles anyway. So in general, I only use it more when I'm in class.

POST 5: CHANGES TO MY STUDY PROGRAMME

After entering college twice, and already finishing my second degree, I realized that higher education is super damaged, but in my career in particular I think there are things that could be changed.

For example, I would change the curriculum and add mandatory courses on gender, since currently (after the feminist demands of 2018) these are only as electives. I would also add more courses on methodology, or at the bottom, courses that help you prepare for your degree, since there is little to prepare you for that.

On the other hand, it would lower the academic load and demand and give more emphasis to field practice and recreational activities. It would change the evaluation system, because I believe that grades do not define what students really know and are able to practice, so rather than pressuring with grades, I would like to see a more real incentive.

It would add more field trips and classroom work and remove jobs that are sent home.

In addition, I would like to provide more material tools within the faculty, fix the infrastructure, and have more technology and tools to facilitate student work.

Finally, as I mentioned at the beginning, I would change education in Chile as a whole, but talking only about the career I study, I would start by changing teaching methods, giving a space for more inclusive and less hierarchical methodologies, where student learning is valued not through numbers, but through other types of responses. In simple words, I would add more pedagogical instinct, so that the classrooms become a space of shared knowledge.

Post 4

 What is your opinion about buying instead of adopting pets?

I think that buying a pet instead of adopting is for ambitious and pretentious people, people who don't really love animals but are looking for something that fits their image. Animals that live on the street suffer a lot and I think the best thing we can do is to adopt.

What is your opinion about climate change?

I think it is a consequence of the installation of a capitalist system that governs the entire world, and at this point it is super difficult to reverse, because even though we raise individual actions that care for the environment, big business continues to affect climate change.

What is your opinion about Immigration?

I think it is a process that will happen in a globalized world, therefore we should open the borders of our minds and accept that the migrant is a person just like us and with the same rights. Migration unleashes racism and racism must be stopped.

What is your opinion about the legalization of abortion in the 3 cases?

I agree with the legalization of abortion not only in the 3 causes, but in any situation, because the body belongs to the woman and it is she who must decide if she wants to be a mother or not. But to legalize it, we also need to make abortion safe and free, as well as to improve sex education to avoid reaching that point.