~~Essay~~

"Modernization: How can teachers apply the historical knowledge into an EFL class?

According to the movie "Modern Times” directed by Charles Chaplin which illustrates the main issues of modernity, the purpose of this essay is to relate how important is to discuss the social issues of modernization from a critical perspective and the advantages of this film as a pedagogical tool in education. For sure, modernization deals with education and through this essay, we will see how useful may be for an English teacher this film to teach his/her students into an EFL class.

The film shows the process of modernization and all the consequences that had in people’s lives. The protagonist, Charles Chaplin, acts as a worker in a factory. Unfortunately, he was just seen as an element in the company. Considering the flow of modernity, in this movie we can see a lot of problems, for instance, unemployment, poverty, hunger and so on. As a result of that situation people were worried because modernity did not accomplish their expectations. Clearly, the whole idea of being modern was not for all the people in the society.

Undoubtedly, we can see perfectly in the development of “Modern Times” that in this period people were just seen as objects without opinion. In that time what people thought had no importance. Mainly, the film reveals the social situation which was just focus on production, performance and competence. Due to the modernity, people lost their value and if we take into account our actual reality in the XXI century we have lived the same. Thus, as English teachers, how can we make student take interest in? How could we do that?

Nowadays, the education is a lively process and it is always in transformation. These problems or changes answer to the great demands of modern times. That is why, it has been necessary to give an active role to the teaching and learning process in which as teachers we can apply this film. Teachers have a real challenge to engage students trying to relate English language teaching with what happened many years ago, even though if some students believe that talking about the past is not really important or it is too far away; times when people were too different. Despite the era, this film is able to bring history into the class, show how common people are and make history more relatable. It is very important for us knowing the issues involved in the movie, because we can understand in a better way why we have this cultural and educational context.

From my point of view, the film helps us to have a critical and strongest thinking about the idealistic thoughts that we have about what is modernity. Through the film it could be one of our goals as a teacher to teach English as a foreign language to students through what is happening within our society in order to look for our identity. English can be as powerful as any other language. It is just our work how to teach English bearing in mind this historical knowledge in order to make it meaningful for our students.

To conclude, in our language teaching experience this film has many advantages as a pedagogical tool in order to teach for our today’s society. As teachers, we can encourage our students to be critical and active learners helping them to know the society, the development of the history and the language and also, the problems that we suffer nowadays and what we could do together to help. Our teaching practice is very important because we are the ones who can teach how to be critical thinker and at the same time, promoting open minded students. Moreover, in the classroom students can still set goals and try to accomplish them, as long they are willing to improve and have a better future. Finally, the movie will help you to reflect on the ways you could cope with educational and social problems. For that reason, I recommend teachers this film, because it gives us the opportunity to think about all the things that are not working in this world and how we can make little changes in the society or in people’s mind. Also, encourages us trying to keep going with our own pursuit of changing the world and improve the education in the EFL classes.

Outline.. final essay ^^

Movie: Modern times

Title: "Modernization: How can teachers apply the historical knowledge into a EFL class?

• Introduction
• social issues because of modernization in the society through the movie
  
• Importance as a pedagogical tool for English teachers and students
• Conclusion

Modern Times:::

Chaplin’s film clearly put into discussion the progress for society which is argued ironically in order to shows us the influence that industrialization and Modernity had on people’s everyday life. In terms of the elements seen in the film to support my idea, I think that....Firstly, the film shows us how economic progress is affecting the society, which is changing and desperately becoming modern. From the movie we can see that a factory full of machines and factory workers. Also, it shows a crowd of people running to their jobs. At this point, Chaplin is forced to work too hard and fast in a factory. That is why he had a nervous breakdown and he is sent to the hospital. After that event, he was sent to jail for a misunderstanding. There, he met many people who showed him how the life inside the prison was. Finally, he fall deeptly in love with a poor girl and they will have to faced many difficulties in order to get a home.

What I liked the most was to see the reality of those times in a funny way and how life was for people who were living the process of modernity which was affecting their life and minds. I think that modernity brought many social problems about society progress because their relaxed life changed.
Considering our own life, I got many ideas about what’s happening nowadays in modern cities. I was thinking about how we are living in this big city because we can see that every single day people run, everybody works. So, I think that from this movie I take away that progress and time means working, getting money and stress. Moreover, it was a period of time when getting a job was so difficult and the working conditions were not appropriate.

“Elizabeth; The Golden Age”

In this post I will write about my own understanding of Elizabeth’s reign and its importance for the British culture and history.

The reign of Queen Elizabeth I, is known as The Golden Age of English history. Elizabeth was a popular Queen called the Virgin Queen because she secured a shift of power through her embodiment of symbolic virginity. From the movie we could see that she never married a man. In fact, she had to overcome the prejudice fighting against the ones who said she was not able to govern the country.

During her reign, Elizabeth faced a difficult realm: dissension between Catholics and Protestants in the society. She faced a conflict related to her religion and, in consequence, the religion of her country. Elizabeth, as Protestant, had to deal with Phillip II, the Roman Catholic King of Spain, who was completely against Protestants. That is why Philip II declared the war to England and to get the control of the new world America. Another problem was that Mary Stuart of Scotland wanted Queen Elizabeth throne so, she tried to get rid of Elizabeth.
Her reign witnessed widespread increase and great achievements in the arts of literature and language through the works of Shakespeare as well as expansion overseas with Francis Drake and Walter Raleigh. They represent the expansion of lands and English influence in the New World and military victory over threatened invasion.

In my opinion, all these facts show the British development and this Queen as a legend in her own lifetime for her remarkable abilities and achievements.

“Natives & Immigrants”

Let me write my reflection about the natives and immigrants in the formation of the United Kingdom.
Over the centuries, immigrants and natives have enriched British culture bringing with them different ways of living. But, first we need to understand where the people came from and its settlement ir order to contextualized the process of UK shaping the world.
The outline of Britain's political, economic and cultural history from Neolithic times until now is full of important facts describing how these groups of people were developing certain customs, art, skills and so on. The history of Prehistoric England, from Stonehenge represent some evidence about the first inhabitants and the notion of what was the stone circle built for.

The earliest people are thought to have come to Britain about 500,000 years ago. During the ages, many tribes like the Celts and Belgae developed knowledge of tools, languages and a wide mix of cultures and also became the dominant people in the country.

In human terms, the UK has an extraordinarily rich and diverse heritage becoming a powerful nation with one language and culture. In my opinion, the richness of UK cultural life is because of its history. For many years different people and cultures have had an influence on the UK and consequently played a role in creating the society they live today.

Culture Questionnarie

This post wil be about my experience doing the field work about culture. During the survey differents tendencies and points of view were exposed in the answers of people related to interests,knowledge of the country,typical customs, language and so on.
In general, I was very surprised to know that the most difficult answer was about how would you define "culture". Only a few words people could said about it. Why does this happen? For example, people think that culture is a way of life related with values, custom, beliefs and behaviors in society. In other words, how you see the world around you. So, what is our identity?and as chileans how our language shape the way we think? Another important thing during the questionnarie was the attitudes from these people. Some of them were not interested or lost and others were kind and enthusiastics.
In short, the opinions were influenced because of the time that we are living or just preferences from the people. The diversity of people`s answers help us to reflect about culture and how people identify themselves with the country.

CulTUrE, CiviLizAtiOn & CRiTicaL tHiNkinG

I rather like to tell my thoughts about it...
The word civilisation is often used especially when it refers to a particular society in a particular place or at time. Likewise, Culture goes beyond knowledge and deeper in civilization becaue culture is the core that unifies people and makes history of it. on the other hand, we already know that there are many definitions of critical thinking but it's important to disscuss the fact that how teachers promote critical thinking in school.
Teachers must integrate critical thinking skills into all aspects of learning. In fact,thinking logically is a way of learning.
At each school, critical thinking must be practiced in each suject. However,some people think that this means hard work for the teacher because it's much easier to teach students to memorize facts than emphasize thinking,analysis and opportunities to organize ideas and support value judgments.