MY INTROSPECTION Angel Rojas ENGLISH LANGUAGE PROGRAM LEVEL 6 YACHAY TECH, ECUADOR
MY INTROSPECTION BY ANGEL ROJAS
ENGLISH LANGUAGE PROGRAM YACHAY TECH LEVEL 6 001 TEACHER: Matthew Mackey JANUARY 10, 2017 IMBABURA, ECUADOR
TABLE OF CONTENTS PORTFOLIO LETTER RESPONSE ESSAY INTERPRETATION ESSAY FINAL RESEARCH PROJECT ESSAY REFLECTIONS THANK YOU LETTER
Ángel Rojas Universidad Yachay Tech Imbabura, Ecuador January 9th, 2017
Dear Portfolio Reader:
My name is Ángel Rojas. I appreciate your reading of my English Language Portfolio. This is a document in which I include the best assignments in my last semester-level of Yachay Tech English Program. These works are three essays and a research project developed during classes or at home. Moreover, each of the essays is proof to let you know how well I learned English in Sixth Level. And my research project compacts all my language skills to communicate you clearly my study on the loss of students’ interest in schools. This portfolio represents self-realization of my academic career to be an inter-disciplinary professional. This semester was dynamic in my expertise in English. I can reflect it as a valuable stage of learning of a communicative tool that I will not stop using. The outcome of this process is remarkable on my structure of thinking and expression. In the beginning, I failed to introduce my ideas to engage a reader my essays. This difficulty was really focused on the specificity of my thesis statement. Though I knew about essays’ topics, I worked hard to approach my supporting ideas in my thesis statement. However, throughout class sessions, the readings of different articles such as “How does language shape the way we think” by Lera Boroditsky allowed me to get used, particularly, how scientific writings and speeches are done. In addition to learning of writing skills, my group interpretative essay was
pretty joyful because of the collaboration between my classmates. Our interpretations about Picasso’s painting, ¨Guernica¨, meant a lot of information to describe precisely the picture. Though we did not get a good grade, the
responsibility of our work was scored high. Another assignment was my response essay. I notice that respect between authors of books, articles, and so on, is a condition to construct new knowledge. APA format – in my perspective, it could better – is essential to promulgate the recognition and reference of ideas. And the last essay, literary analysis, taught me that a good study of literary figures can take you to an objective perspective of a literary work. After all this, my research project is an exemplar of my capacity to find out trustful information and regard ideas from others to include in my study. Therefore, I can be sure and proud that my essays can be improved by myself because I am a better English language user. My love of English will endure in my life because I could perform my knowledge with any English language user from any place in any part of the world. My challenge, currently, is to receive classes of any subject in English. And, in consequence, the reading of textbooks will lead me to enrich my vocabulary and expressions. Well, I thank you for reading my portfolio. I trust that you enjoy the reading of it and that you trust me about my English proficiency. That is why my work is available to take it as a reference of my expertise as an English language user.
Sincerely,
Ángel Rojas
RESPONSE ESSAY
RUNNING HEAD: THE CURRENT EDUCATION PARADIGM
The Current Education Paradigm Angel Adrián Rojas Jiménez Yachay Tech University
THE CURRENT EDUCATION PARADIGM
The Current Education Paradigm Currently, an obsolete education paradigm is absorbing students’ money and thoughts. This institutions are not offering a new model of edification to satisfy economic growth and promote a cultural sense of identity for students. According to Ken Robinson, this paradigm is been reformed, but the incidence of this change is not really being experienced between pupils (2010). Ken Robinson believes educational reform is necessary, and to a large extent, reform is underway, but the incidenc of this change is not really being experienced by pupils. Moreover, there is no distinction with the present education system and the one raised in the Enlightment age. An educational system founded over the principles of production in mass. The result was a learning process of hard studying to get a job, if you had the money to pay for it. Nowadays, we are living, incredibly, almost with the same experience. A little bit different because of the development of theoric and practique knowledges as technology, literature, or music. In this way, our imagination is involved in this limited learning process, deteriorating our capacity to be original and to develop rewarding ideas, characteristics that define creativity according to Ken Robinson’s video. He said that creativity is the process of having original ideas that have value. Moreover, he shows off the capacity of kids to not be frightened when one is wrong. Schools stigmatize in order to make us grow up. In consequence, our intelligence has been squandered since childhood. Robinson advice that schools must rethink their view of children’s learning capacity because of its diversification in age or attention level. When we think about how we experience something pleasurably, in neurological terms, our brain does not enclose the ideas in one compartment or lobe. And, because of one brain’s distinctness from others,
RUNNING HEAD: THE CURRENT EDUCATION PARADIGM
qualifying each one must be different. Therefore, a standardization evaluation is not enough now to pounder knowledge or quality of reasoning in students. Furthermore, this 21th century with its all technological advancements specifically on interactive platforms as phones, tablets, and portable video games is letting notice this period as the most intensive stimulating one of the history on Earth. Robinson mentions his disagreement about some psychologists that observe this phenomena as a worldwide spreading disease, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder or ADHD in students. He refused arguing that students get distracted easily because they do not pleasure learning that kind of information. Standardized tests and grouping of students by their age are facts to produce desperation or boring on students mentioned by Robinson’s video. In fact, there is no scientific or historical evidence that knowledge can be only spread in groups of same age. Students’ experiences in education must be integral with a kind of sense of liberty that makes them know themselves deeper. This philosophy encourages priciples of freedom to group students. For instance, colleges have classrooms according age, but, in universities, there are classrooms according to faculties. Actually, college and university have the same groupoing method. And, students, for the most part, can select whichever class they want to be in. This binding substracts them a sense of life. People must follow life las in adulthood. Everyone can choose in what direction turns his life. But, now, students have two choices to experience their education: aaesthetic or esthetic. In an ideal society, the experience must be esthetic which remarks that people feel alive when they are perceiving something new or in a new mode. However, education is usually perceived in an aesthetic way. Students shut off their senses and keeps inert in a room full of silence.
RUNNING HEAD: THE CURRENT EDUCATION PARADIGM
In conclusion, Robinson is right when he said that the current educational system frames the thinking process specially on children. Every society must rethink how is carrying out its educational system and how it can improve according to its traditions and cultural needs. The current educational system has mined our minds and pockets as we strip-mine the Earth for commodities. We have to follow Robinson’s paradigm and let creativity be part of a divergent intelligence in which everyone formulates more than one answer and regards more than one way to perceive a question.
THE CURRENT EDUCATION PARADIGM
References Changing education paradigms(2010). Retrieved July 19, 2016, from https://www.ted.com/talks/ken_robinson_changing_education_paradigms
INTERPRETATION ESSAY
Running head: GUERNICA: ANALYSIS AND INTERPRETATION
Guernica: Analysis and Interpretation of This Piece of Art Cristina Mina, Ivรกn Lรณpez, ร ngel Rojas Yachay Tech University
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GUERNICA: ANALYSIS AND INTERPRETATION OF THIS PIECE OF ART
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Guernica: Analysis and Interpretation of This Piece of Art “In the picture, I am painting — which I shall call Guernica — I am expressing my horror of the military caste which is now plundering Spain into an ocean of misery and death." (Picasso, 1937). Guernica by Pablo Picasso is one of the most important paintings of all time. The meaning of Guernica is not trivial because of its binary colored background. This picture is based on the town of Guernica in the province of Biscay in Basque country. During the Spanish civil war it was regarded as the northern bastion of the Republic resistance movement and the epicenter of Basque culture. The painting is a message that tells us all people suffered during the war. Guernica is replete with symbolism, hidden messages and emotions. Although the picture is very difficult to understand at first glance, observing with a little care is noticeable some scared aspects. The image background sets up a room in black and white and full of pain by people and animals’ expressions. Animals, adults and children screaming and dying are the ways that Pablo Picasso, the artist, to transmit the message of the barbarity committed. The characters in the painting represent a variety of humans. There are women, children, and men. Specifically, there also seem to be roles and social statuses represented. The dead warrior on the ground with his arms mutilated from his body. Besides, one of his holding a sword, symbolizes the savagery and cruelty that the main characters experience during the War. The characters include soldiers, housekeepers, and countryman who accept war as a way to solve their social conflicts. Freedom sometimes costs death. This dilemma shows the coldness that can reach a human being and his enemies during times of conflict. Gesture of pain rooted by the death of innocent. An example of this gesture is the mother cradling her dead baby with his face turned to the sky. His tongue is sharpened like a stiletto and his eyes have the form of tears. She holds in her arms her son without pupils,
GUERNICA: ANALYSIS AND INTERPRETATION OF THIS PIECE OF ART
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already dead. It represents innocent lives including children and babies taken during the Spanish Civil War as well as the suffering of the people who had to live and deal with these losses. The animals, both the horse and the bull, make us see that not only human beings suffered during this conflict. These animals are used as "tools" during the battle to achieve the war’s objectives. However, according to another interpretation, the bull "can mean the panic of people as well as the collapse of Spain as a country and the horse alludes to the thousands of people who suffered and lived in devastating."(Aguirre) This as a symbol focused only on humans leaving aside animals. The foreigners are spectators of a war’s violence. As a person is outside the room, he is considered a foreigner. The dark room, has a door in which an outsider is looking amazed through the light of his lamp. His incredulity is vanished when, with his extended arm, tries to illuminate the whole room and observe clearly the war’s sequels. His wondering, noticed by his open eyes and his open mouth, demonstrates the magnitude of the war on the people involved in it. Guernica’s inhabitants are pressed by the war. They cannot continue their normal lives and are in the expectation of peace. In the painting, the pressure is demonstrated with a kneeling person and his sight towards the light of the room. His back inclined trying to get up or pushing to let him crawl. This posture reflects the weight of the war on his conscience, his attempt to survive, and his desire for the end of the war.
The agony produced by fire cannot extinct it with screams. A continuous suffering is an allusion in Guernica. The rightmost side of the paint shows a little black space with certain depth similar to a jail. This jail with a small window shows a person asking for help while he is burning alive. This destruction left by war burned the expectation of life of innocent
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people. Their unique consolations were shouting or crying. However, their lives could not have continued without their hope to live. Hope is the last thing you lose. Although the entire picture means pain and sorrow, there are some small symbols that can mean a ray of light, a life expectancy. The light on the ceiling of the room is a representation of the village ideals. Light could mean a hope to a new change and start over. Also the flower, in the bottom, means life and prosperity, a new beginning. It is to say that after all suffering, it is possible to create a new society. In conclusion, the picture represents pain in different scenarios. The author transmits all these messages and feelings with each character. He uses the black and white colors as a background to focus the serious mood on his artwork. Also, the appearance of adults, children and animals to show that nobody was exempt of the suffering of this civil war is a reflection of the social consequences in the whole Spanish society.
GUERNICA: ANALYSIS AND INTERPRETATION OF THIS PIECE OF ART References Aguirre, A. (n.d.). Retrieved on November 15, 2016, Retrieved 28 September, 2016 from: http://home.moravian.edu/public/eng/writingCenter/prize/2014_FYS _Aguirre.pdf
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Desperation in a yard
Desperation in a yard Ángel Adrián Rojas Jiménez Yachay Tech University
Desperation in a yard Sometimes the past is one’s present causing encountered feelings. In the front yard a sir with mature aspect moved all his furniture of his house there. Quite organized, the yard was full of stuff: a bed, a kitchen table, a sofa, and cartons; completely a house out house. It seemed to be a garage sale. The man with his whiskey and beers stayed sit looking for nothing. When he had gone to buy more liquor, a couple passed by his house in a car. They felt a kind of desperation because of the excessive amount of things. Perfectly, the garbage sale is the subject of a mood which represents three virtues of this sir: liberty, nostalgic, and commitment. The drinker felt liberation throwing out or selling physical objects of his ownership and memories. Indeed, his freedom leads the acceptance of any offer that the couple requested when he met them after his shop of drinks. He could be analogized to a slave trying to escape of his shackles. His attitude deleted the visual past, however, it also shows his nostalgic in the selling. The liberated man looked in liquor the solution to manage his nostalgic. During the sale, he grinned and poured whiskey in couple’s glasses. He stared couple to enter in their intimacy. They, dancing, and he, playing his records. The couple got drank and he continued entertaining with the closeness and love between them. In consequence, he conceived his nostalgic and found a refugee inside himself, trying to stay in his selfcommitment of forget the past. The liquor also held his commitment for abandoning his stuff. Whiskey and beers were a refugee of his intense war to forget what he felt before his love was gone. Furthermore, he looked in liquor the manner to win his in-war drinking alone, with
Desperation in a yard friends, or, evenly, with a lovely couple. Looking happiness in others to regard the irony of his passages on love. This man surpassed his past through extreme strategies that leaded him to feel himself comfortable with each decision he took. Drinking, selling, expecting, and drinking more were such strategies to share his desperation to escape from what he used to love. Be free and never give up are part of his commitment lemmas to continue living without his love.
FINAL RESEARCH PROJECT ESSAY
Running head: SCHOOLS ARE LOSING STUDENTS’ INTEREST TO LEARN
Schools Are Losing Students’ Interest to Learn in Classrooms Ángel Adrián Rojas Jiménez Yachay Tech University
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SCHOOLS ARE LOSING STUDENTS’ INTEREST TO LEARN
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Abstract Schools are challenged to have student centered classrooms in which a teacher is worried the development of learning skills such as creative thinking and critical thinking. However, the advancement of technology of 21 st century is taking away students’ interest to learn in schools’ traditional medium, a classroom. Because students feel more comfortable studying and searching through internet or software application than in a dialogue with a teacher. This preference is influenced also by teacher’s strictness of evaluation. This sort of evaluation stigmatizes students through their answers, recalling them as mistakes of knowledge. In consequence, students reject the manner they are valued and ask for evaluations that consider the value of their ideas and performance during a class.
SCHOOLS ARE LOSING STUDENTS’ INTEREST TO LEARN IN CLASSROOM Schools are losing students’ interest to learn in classrooms Around the world, education models are being challenged to emphasize student centered classrooms. But, schools and students diverge on the possible causes of lack of efficiency on the spreading of knowledge. Indeed, students everywhere are redefining the connotation of learning to enjoy the time spent in a boring subject. In contrast, schools are defining student disinterest in learning as a disorder, the so-called ADHD, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. These differences reflect an uncomfortable atmosphere in classrooms. An atmosphere in which students are forced to learn a common-obligatory curriculum and to be measured by standardized evaluations in which students’ learning skills are not really valued and therefore the system should change. A common-obligatory curricula is enclosing students’ right of choice to advance through their own preferences. This educational management diminishes students’ convictions and scatters the objectiveness to go to a classroom. For instance, a scholar with art preferences would not focus ‘efficiently’ in a chemistry class. In his perspective, this student could work efficiently analogizing the art with chemistry through poems, writings, drawings, paintings, and so on. But, his chemistry teacher, particularly, could discourage him with low grades and, possibly, opposition to the student’s work. In consequence, this student might discontinue his mechanism of learning in order to accomplish a profile of a chemist student. Such a decision is a reference that students who are not engaged in a subject should not be measured through standardized evaluations. A standardized evaluation devalues student’s answers. The Glossary of Educational Reform states that a standardized test is any form of test that requires all
SCHOOLS ARE LOSING STUDENTS’ INTEREST TO LEARN IN CLASSROOM test takers to answer the same questions, in the same way, and that is scored in a “standard” or consistent manner, which makes it possible to compare the relative performance of individual students or groups of students (2016). In this way, a scholar is obligated to reproduce parts of teacher’s speech as answers for a test of this sort. Though every student cannot answer in the same way as their teacher or their textbook formulates, these standardized evaluations stigmatize students through their answers, recalling it as mistakes. As a result, a student will pass every course doing the same of his teacher and his textbook to avoid mistakes. However, Ken Robinson, an educational expert, says in TedTalks that if a student is not prepared to be wrong, he will never come up with anything original. Furthermore, he argues that creativity is therefore being affected for not producing original ideas that have value (2006). Schools are killing the originality of students’ ideas. The surpassing of student’s worry to get good grades over their formations of their learning skills is constraining students’ performance in class. For example, a math textbook eliminates students’ creativity in an exercise having its answers on last pages. This fact makes null the originality of solutions on students’ tasks because the cheating is obvious. This mechanism of management of students’ capacity through these evaluations results in a monotonic and, at some point, an irrelevant fact in students’ life. In consequence, students feel bored and mechanical at the moment they do homework or take a test. They are not really developing learning skills to make of a classroom an interactive place to spread knowledge. The use of learning skills of students must be one scholarly evaluation. According to Inquire: A Guide to 21st Century Learning, exist four learning skills: critical thinking, creative thinking, communicative skills, and collaboration skills (King, 2011). The first two ones are pretty connected to the adjustments that schools should
SCHOOLS ARE LOSING STUDENTS’ INTEREST TO LEARN IN CLASSROOM apply in standardized evaluations. The book defines that critical thinking is ability to compare, contrast, analyze, categorize, and evaluate any knowledge, for example, a study of World Wars during 20th century. Besides, a creative thinking is an expansive, open-ended invention and discovery of possible solutions of a problem. This manner of thinking create a diversity of critic and creativity in students in a classroom. Educational experts call such diversity: divergent intelligence. Ken Robinson defines divergent intelligence as the ability to see lots of possible answers to a question. However, he argues that such intelligence is evidentially decreased in order for a student who matriculates to a next-higher course. Therefore, in technical words, standardized evaluations simplify the work of a teacher to grade students, but not accurately evaluates a student’s performance in class. This unsure judgment leads to a teacher to qualify students’ point of view strictly. Such strictness is reflected on low grades producing deception and confusion on students. Inclusively, a student staggers in a moral limbo when a teacher persuades a unique point of view about the manner in which a test must be done. In Ética, education must represent a democratic system that contributes the formation of one’s individual stature to face life with a defined concept of oneself and self-esteem (Cortina, 1996). A fact that the current education system does not accomplish because of professor’s power to say he has the only truth in classroom. This interaction results in a student chained on a seat in front of a board. However, the current advancements in technology represents an escape of students to face this obsolete and not well structured learning process. This 21th century with its all technological advancements - phones, tablets, and portable video games -is representing this period as the most intensive stimulating one of the history on Earth. (Robinson, 2006). This stimulation is well accepted in students during classes. In contrast, some psychologists oppose this acceptance, observing this
SCHOOLS ARE LOSING STUDENTS’ INTEREST TO LEARN IN CLASSROOM phenomena as a worldwide spreading of ADHD in students. Ken Robinson refuted that students get distracted easily because they do not pleasure learning the kind of information studied in class. “Standardized tests and grouping students by their age are facts to produce desperation or boredom on students” said Robinson in his video Changing Education Paradigm (2010). Such perspective is what educational experts to say that students are changing the connotation of learning. This changing of educational paradigm reflects that learning is being involved in different contexts for children. A student currently is being always a receptor of any kind of information. His cognitive experience occurs whenever he uses his preferred technological platform. Therefore, a school is converting a not enough place for kids and adolescents to study and innovate knowledge. Nowadays, a learning experience refers to any interaction, course, program, or other experience in which learning takes place, whether it occurs in traditional academic settings - schools, classrooms - or nontraditional settings - outside-of-school locations, outdoor environments (The Glossary of Education Reform, 2016). Furthermore, the interactions between the source of information and its correspondent receptor, “the student”, are really different comparing what was before 21st century education. (Robinson, 2010) Besides the education between teacher and student, there exists nontraditional interactions through software applications. An example is the video games. Video games is a complex software that needs complex motor and cognitive demands to be used. This demand represents in a person a certain brain structural plasticity that induces currently some uncertain consequences. One of these consequences is unveiled in a social inclusive study done by Italian neuropsychologists. They demonstrate that children who suffer of dyslexia can improve
SCHOOLS ARE LOSING STUDENTS’ INTEREST TO LEARN IN CLASSROOM their attentional skills during action video game training. (Franceschini et al, 2013) In their study, the training was during nine session of eighty minutes each one. This paper published in Current Biology website says that it has been demonstrated that action video games efficiently improve attention abilities; the results showed that this attention improvement can directly translate into better reading abilities, providing a new, fast, fun remediation of dyslexia that has theoretical relevance in unveiling the causal role of attention in reading acquisition. In conclusion, schools are losing the interest of students in class. Because the monotonic speech of the teacher does not encourage a true dialogue with students to develop their learning skills. In contrast, the work of teachers is being replaced by technology. That is the case of internet which facilitates a communicative medium between class members to search for answers or opinions of topics of conversation in a classes’ lectures. Opposition to this kind of technology is reduced to nothing with scientific results that show progress of learning skills using software application as video games. A reconsideration of a change in curricula and the manner of evaluation can project an increment in students’ interest in schools and therefore leads to a formation of students with a deep critical and creative thinking through collaboration and communication.
SCHOOLS ARE LOSING STUDENTS’ INTEREST TO LEARN IN CLASSROOM References
Ken Robinson (2010). Changing Education Paradigm. Retrieved November 15, 2016 from https://www.thersa.org/discover/videos/rsa-animate/2010/10/rsa-animate--changing-paradigms Ken Robinson (2006). Do schools kill creativity? Retrieved November 18, 2016 from https://www.ted.com/talks/ken_robinson_says_schools_kill_creativity Concepts, L. The Glossary of Education Reform (2016). Retrieved November 15, 2016 from http://edglossary.org/ Franceschini, S., Gori, S., Ruffino, M., Viola, S., Molteni, M., & Facoetti, A. (2013). Action Video Games Make Dyslexic Children Read Better. Current Biology King, R. (2011). Inquire: A guide to 21st century learning. Moorabbin, Vic.: Hawker Brownlow Education. Orts, A. C., & Navarro, E. M. (1996). Etica. Torrejón Ardoz, Madrid, España: Akal.