Becoming a CLIL Tutor: FIRST SESSION

Becoming a CLIL Tutor: FIRST SESSION: This entry is for you to get to know a bit about the course. First, what exactly is CLIL? Watch the video. In here you

The Power of Language

Alastair Pennycook (2001) said that in 1990 a group of teachers and students of the University of California decided to found the journal Issues in Applied Linguistics,  the term Critical Applied Linguistics was also assumed to focus attention on the limits of traditional Applied Linguistics to counteract some general assumptions as teachers superiority of native versus non-native, the criterion of a particular privilege pedagogical approach of a specific language model. In the process of the supposed ideological progress in other areas of knowledge, there is the existence of a critical pedagogy, critical discourse analysis or critical ethnology, Pennycook (2001) suggests a perspective that reveals the most overtly political and ideological knowledge , language, text, language pedagogy and evaluation of the "difference". Finally, Pennycook clarifies that Critical Applied Linguistic is not seen as a discipline, whereas it is a way of thinking that has to spread, as a antidisciplinarity praxis or an applied Linguistics "With attitude", as he describes it.

  We are being dominated by English-speaking countries through the language. The power of language, for instance, is represented by the classroom.  For example, we as teachers are trying to pursue our students to act, behave, think and express themselves in such a way that it seems they don't have the right to share their ideas freely, ours students just try to say what we want to listen and how we want to listen to it. The language is a way to colonize the world in which we are living, the textbooks we use in class, for example (which by the way, the majority of them are from British publishing houses)are giving the discourse of a world, culture and life that our Colombian students (for example) are not even close to. They have to learn things from countries totally different from them; they don’t even need so much garbage about other countries because at the end of the day they are going just to start thinking that their culture is not worthy enough to be at least in an English lesson. There is a way to colonize too, there is a way of looking for other places to conquer through the language and the worst thing is that we fail into that trap. We are going straight to a "bilingualism program" which has no more than just crazy objectives in a short period of time with a lot of difficulties in the middle of the way such as the number of people inside the classroom and the lack of resources and even prepared teachers to deal with that overwhelming rush to fictional goals. The idea is not to be against English language radically, the idea is to change the view of "necessity" we have towards it, there are many other languages to learn, let the people choose. We need more critical teachers with a perspective of language not only as a "tool" to get a job or to be successful but also as a door-opener to see beyond our eyes.

Suggested Readings

Freire, P.(1970). Pedagogía del oprimido. De Río de Janeiro: Paz e Terra, 
Pennycook, A. (2001). A Critical Introduction. Nueva Jersey, U. S. Lawrence E. Associates Inc. Publishers. 

Applied Linguistics

Applied linguistics is a branch of linguistics whose goal is the application of the theories, methods and expertise of linguistics to various problem solving that is involved in the use of language, in other words, is interested in linguistics applications in other areas of human experience. Because the areas involving the use of language they are many and varied, applied linguistics in fact comprises several disciplines, most of which are established as interdisciplinary fields of knowledge.

The birth of applied linguistics as a scientific discipline should be located in the United States in the late 1940s: in 1946 he organized a course at the University of Michigan (United States) with this title and in 1948 began publishing the first magazine on the subject. Its origin is linked to the teaching of second languages​​, as it sought to collect the experience of numerous specialists who were forced to develop fast and effective methods of teaching foreign languages ​​for the U.S. military during World War II. Discipline was a boom during the 50s, in parallel in the United States and Europe (especially in Britain and later in France) and gradually extended their fields of interest.

The area in which maybe applied linguistics has undergone further evolution is the teaching and learning of second languages. This evolution has included several stages, which have run parallel to the advances that were occurring in linguistics and psychology, and couples have been proposed methods and approaches. Thus, for example, the emergence of structuralism, which identifies patterns and linguistic structures of each language-features and behavioral psychology underlie Audiolingual method, which is based on mechanistic repetition linguistic structures. The development of contrastive linguistics has had to reflect the development of contrastive analysis. Later, the expansion of the interests of linguistics to the use of language and communication aspects led to the proposal of communicative approaches and tasks approach.

I suggest the folllowing Readings

1. Christal, D. (1981). Directions in Applied Linguistics. Londres: Academic Press.
2. Kaplan, R. (2001). Oxford Handbook of Applied Linguistics. Nueva York: Oxford Univesity Press.
3. Pennycoo

HOW DO I BOOST READING AND WRITING WHILE AT THE SAME TIME NURTURING THEIR ABILITY TO EXPRESS THEMSELVES MEANINGFULLY? (Summary)

Fostering reading and writing, while at the same time motivating our students the ability to express meaningfully, is not an easy task. When analyzing the implementation and the corresponding preparation of Reading and Writing Skills in the foreign language classroom, it is possible to affirm that the teacher does not give the correct amount of time and even less prepare what is going to be proposed to students. “Writing (for example) has been a neglected area of English language teaching for some years” (Maley 2010, p. 8) Moreover, the teachers are more worried about other issues in the language such as the Grammar or Vocabulary and little time to practice Listening or Speaking. But just at the end, and if there is time, he/she decides then to give a piece of paper with a lot of lines for students to write on or just make copies of a reading about celebrations, for example, that he/she got from a pop-up textbook or a web page in which comprehension questions are already set.

 

 “There is no time”, “I have a lot of students”, “I don’t know what they like”, “anyway they don’t do anything” “this worksheet could work” “It is not too long/short” are the many different excuses a teacher gives just to support reasons why he/she does not teach Reading and Writing or just why he/she guides a mediocre process. What maybe we as teachers do not know is that if more organization is implemented at the moment of designing the materials and executing the activities in the classroom, we can guide a process to be proud of. With this perception of teaching Reading and Writing the teacher could be changing the students’ perspective towards the lessons by giving them the chance to be more enrolled in the process promoting meaningful participation.

 

Reading and writing are considered very important skills at the moment of communicating, it is so that when school starts the main concerns is to learn how to read and write. In order to foster students’ perceptions of meaning towards suggested Reading and Writing tasks in the classroom, it is vital for the learners to make sense on what has been implemented.

According to Tribble (1996) “writing means whereby a text is produced. It includes all of the preparatory work a writer does before beginning writing, as well as the work that he or she does while writing and during revising and editing” ( p. 161)  On the other side, Godman (1991) (Cited in Suleiman) affirms that “Reading is seen as an active process of comprehending [where] students need to be taught strategies to read more efficiently (e. g., guess from context, define expectations, make inferences about the text, skim ahead to fill in the context, etc.” (p. 143) Taking into account the definitions stated above, it is possible to say that Reading is not only the action of decoding words to find out a message neither Writing represents joining morphemes to convey a message. In fact they are really complex processes that need further attention and preparation from the teacher. If the teacher wants coherent Writing and Reading activities, it is important to take into account processes such as correlating the two skills into a circle of receiving and producing information, in other words, to implement a reading-to-write process as one of the strategies to show coherence by connecting topics and ideas.

 

 Furthermore, Reading is considered as a receptive skill and writing is a productive one. In this sense, regarding the concept of receptive skill (reading in this case) Cook (1998) (cited in Harmer) assures that “in order to make sense of any text, we need to have pre-existent knowledge of the world” (p. 251). Each of us carries in our heads mental representations of typical situations that we have come across during our life experiences and in that sense we have to catch the attention of our students to make the activities meaningful to them. As Jeremy Harmer claims, when we are stimulated by particular words, discourse patterns, or contexts, we employ our previous knowledge as we approach the process of comprehension, and we deploy a range of receptive skills (i.e. strategies) such as predicting, guessing, or interpreting. (p. 199)

 To conclude, to teach reading and writing skills definitely needs a lot of preparation from the teacher and a lot of commitment and interest from the student. It is not intended to be an easy process in which out of the blue students have to get involved and participate just because it is part of a task. To find students something interesting to read and write about means to implement activities that are coherent in the sense that they are not presented in an isolated way. Meaningful reading and writing represents a process introduced little by little with the appropriate activities, so students can feel that in fact there are links that make the process stronger and more comprehensible. Teaching Reading and Writing need to be connected in a logical and coherent way which is illustrated by the concept that language is a whole not a set of segregated items. Moreover, for students, Reading and Writing activities should give the sense of being useful at the moment of pursuing the possibility of expressing thoughts and ideas involving the things that happen to them every day (meaningful production). While teachers keep having the same old internet-designed worksheets or text-book activities for Reading and Writing without reflecting on the process, the students will not give one hundred percent of them and their lives in the procedure. Foster Reading and Writing activities involves being part of a serious and oriented process of steps and connections, so they teacher would have a blooming process that will open the door of fostering meaningful expressions that represent the honest voice of our learners.

 

 

The Power of Reading (A Krashen Conference report, Bogota, April 24th)

To start Krashen did a warm-up of his workshop talking about the concept of Comprehension Hypothesis. For Krashen, one way to acquire is to understand the information. The Comprehensible input can be as they "How they say" to "What they say" the canal of this process is the possibility of understand the input.

Krashen explained his point by starting saying that that The Comprehension Hypothesis and the Skill-based Hypothesis are rivals. The CH for Krashen provides the learner the opportunity to develop Literacy and Skills literacy while the SBH worried about the Grammar and Vocabulary to someday use the language.

Krashen continued his point saying that for the "Input" to be "meaningful" it is necessary to be interesting and get Ss' attention. For Krashen one of the main sources of Input is "Reading". However, for Krashen, a learner should read freely and for pleasure. Thanks to Free-voluntary Reading a learner can acquire vocabulary, learn spelling, and reflect on many other issues in the language.

For Krashen Volutary-reading and Reading for pleasure involves different issues such as Access to readings (libraries, internet etc), Massive and autonomous voluntary Reading, appealing material for the learners to get their attention on. The Power of Reading is represented by Reading for pleasure not as something mandatory. This concept makes Reading faster and pleasant. Moreover, it also impedes the Ss’ inclination for easy Reading. Besides, it is important to take advantage that we are living in a literature age where Young children and youngsters are faced to books such as "Harry Potter" and "Twilight".

Reading helps to get language-composition process strategies that lead to good writing and problem solving. Once more, the connection between Reading and Writing is eminent. So, according to Krashen from many advantages mentioned here and faced in the classroom Reading is a powerful tool that we sometimes take for granted, omit, forget or just let at the end of the teaching process.

Children Full of Life (Documentary)

We also have to learn to take care 

Regarding we have been talking about children development and language learning, I have to share this documentary with you guys. One part of this documentary was presented in the ASOCOPI workshop held last Friday (April 12th) The presenter  used the first part of this documentary with the idea of showing us the importance of Critical Thinking beyond the concept of cognition. Thinking critically for Professor Nancy Carvajal means going beyond than just analysing, enquiring, reflectinjg, observing and reasoning about the learning process. She showed us another way of thinking critically in order to foster our students involment in the process of learning a language, with the idea of making it meaningful to them. 

Everyday we come to our classroom with objectives, activities and processes already set. We as teachers try to involve our students into a process that much of the time is not meaningful to them. Students have to write, listen, talk and read about things that has nothing to do with their real lives. We just don't get to know our students beyond the person that is learning a particular topic in English. We forget about the "humanistic" characteristic of  the learner and then we complain because the students does not seem to be "connected" to the class. Maybe we haven't stopped and asked about the importance and meaningness of the activities implemented in the classroom. Students seem to be more involved in processes that touch their personal lives and why not? If we as humans are classifying things into relevant and irrelevant departing from the concept of significance. We want to learn something that help us understand the world. We have the power of engaging our students into the language tasks that are designed under the real-life basis. Dear colleagues, let's start our path to Critical Thinking.  

Note: I'm in love with a lot of things that have been implemented in Japan about education. It would be nice to start analysing those wonderful projects in that wonderful country. They're an example to follow.

Teaching Speaking: Power Point Presentation

ISSUES IN SPEAKING
SPEAKING AND PRONUNCIATION

PPT PRESENTATION
By
Johanna Leon
Angelica Murcia
Sergio Sanchez
Luz Helena Prada

Teaching Skills is not an isolated work

Teaching English as a foreign language EFL involves an interplay of elements such as the characteristics of the teacher, the learner, the setting, and the relevant languages (native and foreign). However, if these elements are not woven together effectively, the result will not be satisfactory. In addition to the elements mentioned above, other important fundamentals exist. In a practical sense, one of the most crucial of these fundamentals consists of the four primary skills of listening, reading, speaking, and writing. It also includes associated or related skills such as knowledge of vocabulary, spelling, pronunciation, syntax, meaning, and usage. When the four primary skills are not equally addressed in the classroom impedes a harmonious language development. Furthermore, the focus on exclusive receptive skill (which normally happens in the majority of institutions in Colombia) eliminates the possibility of students interacting with each other causing a problematic situation for language development and interpersonal relationships due to the fact that for language to develop successfully, learners must be in an environment that allows them to communicate socially in that language. This mode of instruction is known as the segregated-skill approach or the language-based approach as the focus of instruction is the language itself instead of learning for authentic communication. The skill element leads to optimal EFL communication when the skills are interwoven during instruction. This is known as the Integrated-Skill Approach.

The integrated-skills approach (ISA) incorporates the four language skills reading, writing, speaking, and listening. Yan-Chen Su points out the use of ISA to increase students’ understanding of the target language. Moreover, the author indicates that a wide range of authentic materials and integrated class activities allow students to interact lot better with each other changing students’ views on EFL instruction than otherwise. (27) In addition, constructing successful decoding skills entails the teaching and use of reading, writing, speaking and listening skills in the foreign language. In this sense, Marilyn Querejazu states that “a good foreign language teacher will separate confusing signals into their parts, show the correctly written words, explain the content and context and allow spoken and written practice. Receptive and productive communication skills are integrated; therefore the teaching of these skills is necessarily integrated.” For this reason, the present research is focused on how the four skills can be taught and practice in a coherent way and practiced together, making a distinction on the importance of one skill upon the other.

The final recommendation is to  try to expand our view of language as a set of particules or segregated elements. Skills as the word itself means is correlated to "the abilitiy of". We , as teachers, should stop thinking about teaching abilities as if our students were robots which need specific information to act in a certain way at exact moments. I think that it is possible to get a more hollistic view of language so we can act coherently to our view of language as something infinite, abstract, unique , big etc. Language is a whole and our students can see language as something that makes sense since it combines all together the functions and the notions needed to communicate effectively in foreign language.

References: 

Su, Yan-Chen. “Students’ Changing Views and the Integrated-Skills Approach

in Taiwan’s EFL College Classes.” Asian Pacific Education Review 8 (2007): 27-40.

Querejazu, Marilyn. Tesol Courses. September 8^th, 2006

<http://www.tesolonline.com/articles/complete_articles.php?index=160&category=76>

FOXP2: An interesting theory

At the beginning the theory of FOXP2 sounded for me like a Star Wars episode, I just had in mind those sci-fi scenes with big labs and fast rockets. However, looking carefully on the net I found that the FoxP2 is actually a gene and protein that was discovered in the nineties of the twentieth century, it is related to human language: its mutation correlates with certain specific disorders of language

Although it has been given gene expression or speech language to characterize it, it is one factor among those responsible for human competence for language. However, it is an indication that, probably, in the human language are involved some genetic factors: although its exact function is unknown, it seems essential for its normal development of language.

FOXP2 is expressed in several areas of the brain during embryogenesis, although it is unclear whether gene activation occurs in the embryonic stage and if that happens the moment you start to learn to speak. Their levels are highest in layer of the cortex, subcortical structures especially the base of the brain (very close to the corpus callosum): basal ganglia, thalamus and cerebellum. It is also present in embryogenesis of other human organs: lungs, intestine and heart.

It has been suggested also that the same version of the gene was present in Neanderthals, having been modified by natural selection during recent human evolution over the past 200 000 years.

The discovery was made by a group of genetic Wellcome Centre for Human Genetics, University of Oxford, led by Simon Fisher. They had been alerted from an English school of logotherapy about a group of children from the same family (called conventionally KE) who had certain defects of speech and language going back to the great-grandparents. Since disorders manifested block, and to varying degrees, it was understood that its origin was in default of a single allele. Simon Fisher's group identified a mutation in a segment of chromosome 7, at the site where the gene FoxP2 is located.

Although it sounds kind of strange it cannot be far from the truth if you think about how many things can be located in the brain but not discovered yet. We can think about Language as a genetic gift and why not? If we have looked at it as a gift from God. I think that the human body is perfect, everything inside us is there for some reason, we can say that FOXP2 gene give us the chance of producing and understanding language and maybe can be the reason of different diseases presented in our children's development of language. I just have to say that there are infinite ways to look at the language, in that order of ideas we have to consider theories, no matter how new or crazy they sound. Being a Linguist also requires being open-minded, not to every single issue or theory presented, but to be very rational, curious and try to figure out the reason why those theories are presented.  All of these theories are relevant and need respect since they have been conducted seriously and even more if we take into account that in Linguistics we have improved a lot but not enough to discover the innate nature of Language. 

More information: http://www.foxp2.com/

AWAKENINGS Reflections about the movie

Awakenings is a movie based on the autobiography of the neurologist Oliver Sacks, Awakenings tells the true story of the discovery in 1969 of temporary beneficial effects of L-dopa and its application to catatonic patients who survived the epidemic of sleeping sickness in 1917-1928. Oliver Sacks in the film is played by actor Robin Williams under the name of Malcolm Sayer. Malco Sayer is a doctor who throughout his career has been devoted to experimenting with earthworms. He got a job at a hospital in New York City, where he began to treat patients with catatonic disease.

One day he realizes that one of his patients instinctively grabs his glasses before they fall to the ground. Then he started researching about the disease and formulating a hypothesis about the possible causes, but mainly about their treatment.

At this point he is faced to a new problem: the skepticism of his colleagues and relatives of their patients regarding their theory that these patients are likely to return to live and that his illness would be a Parkinson's disease worsened.

Among his various investigations, become familiar with a new drug, L-dopa, which is used to treat Parkinson's, and decide to try it with one of his patients, Leonard Lowe (Robert De Niro).

After many failed attempts, Leonard awakens one night. Thereafter, the doctor receives acceptance from colleagues and relatives of the victims, and financial aid, thanks to which he can begin to treat all patients with this drug.

Those patients saw beautiful moments of their lives coming back again as if never had happened to their healthy lives. They started to live the life from the point they forgot it, it was really amazing for Sayer and his colleagues to see those people living on their own like small kids. Somehow Sayer had awakened them to the life that belongs to them.

However, the problems reappeared when Leonard, the first patient treated with L-dopa, redeveloped symptoms of the disease, and the doctor and his patients and their families are deeply affected. 

I just have to say that we as teachers are doctors of our students. We have in our hands what is necessary to awake them, but we also have the power to keep them asleep forever. Sometimes teaching the contents of the curriculum is not enough. It is important to keep our students aware of what is going on outside. They need to be instructed to life, they need to know the difference of thinking differently (or at least to know the difference) , our students have the right to know that there is another side to the side that is always shown to us. We need to make them feel they can live happy and that learning is part of that happiness, that there is a world outside waiting for them. The opportunities to live a full life are there but we sometimes do not even think there is a possibility for us, how can we convince our students to do so? My reflection goes to the role of the teacher as the alarm clock that always keeps their students on the same truck to the path of success. 

"LANGUAGE IS ABOUT CONNECTIONS"(Five questions given by Professor Fajardo to reflect on)

1. What could Language Learning and Teaching benefit from Neurolinguistic studies?

When regarding the benefits of Neurolinguistics at the moment of teaching or learning a language, it is possible to affirm that they are linked in such a way that they can interplay in different aspects taking into account many issues that can be further explained or clarified by just looking carefully to the inter connections  among them.

Examples of these connections and relations are the influences of language processing in the brain; how some language procedures take place and the different issues that can be considered as encouraging or affecting factors at the moment of attempting to learn another language. Injuries to the lower parts of the post central area of the left hemisphere cause a syndrome in which the articulation of sounds are not possible and the person can have serious difficulty writing words, for example.

Moreover, the Neurolinguistics has a very large interest in the phonetic, morphological, grammatical and syntactical language, and also has been interested in clarifying the role that language plays in transmitting not only data but also in the influence language has on the receptor.

It is also outstanding to consider a careful look and reflection over the causes and consequences that factors that inhibit the process of learning and teaching another language because they can probably be outstanding when looking for answers about "delays" "impediments" or "obstacles" in the process of being a successful learner of a foreign/second language. It is possible to say that Neurolinguistics contemplates the possibility that there may be different functional topographies of the cerebral representation regarding distinct processes in language ​​learning: Aphasia, Dyslexia, among others. 

2. Where is Language?

This question is maybe one of the most difficult to answer at the moment. We can say that Language is everywhere like the air, like the butterflies over the grass in spring. Language is holding the hand of a couple in love or maybe it is in the mischievous look of a little kid when taking cookies without asking for one. Language can be the weird and mocking face of your mother when telling you where the things are supposed to be and you just don't see them. Language is located in the book that was written thousands of years ago and it is still in the hands of a long-haired girl sitting in the park smiling alone because maybe something funny came to her mind. Language is in the news, it is in the politician rehearsed speech or it is in the poster of a girl holding a perfume that you just can't stop looking at. I think I just can describe countless times I've seen, heard and smelt language. But if we have to be a little bit more exact, it is maybe possible to affirm that Neurolinguistically talking the language is processed in our brains, and why not? if our brain is the most complex organism ever known. We make thousands and thousands of connections just to move our hands and say "hello!" and why not if just something affects it (Broca's, Wernicke's area for instance), we can probably never understand a beautiful song while thinking about the meaning of it or while writing a poem that will be read, understood and loved by someone. 

3.What is language?

Language is about connections. It is not only a particular system of communication and it is not necessary an only-human ability. Language is nature, is not only to convey meaning by giving oral or written information since it is possible to see language as body movements, images, gestures, music, sounds etc. Moreover, I consider as a personal appreciation that Language is the true Fountain of Youth as it can immortalize everything across the years. Language is power; it is the possibility of changing other's mind, to convince a complete country to believe or act the way you want. Language can manipulate or liberate the souls, can destroy what was considered not destroyable before. Language is the representation of the human being and his remnant in history. Language is definable and indefinable at the same time, it contains so many things that you just can think of anything and language somehow has something to do there. 

4. To what extent does Neurolinguistics help to reconceptualize the meaning of language competence?

Since Neurolinguistics analyzes the language and its connections with the human brain, it can establish or state the processes which serve as functional regarding the biological capacity of a human being in one part. On the other part, NL also studies on the complex way the language is constructed through human evolution, how the first language is acquired and what can disturb or nourish the learning process of a second one.  With a big influence on what it is supposed to fit into “ability” or “capacity”, the NL can help to focus or center the attention on characteristics that can be characterized into solid language competence or the existance of a reinforcement need or special treatment application in order to get close to what a conscious and effective language competence is. Despite the concept of competence can be misunderstood only by the “capacity” it is possible to take it into account also as the “appropriate or adequate learning procedure” so It not only the capacity to learn a language what matters to NL but also what enforces or stimulates the learner in order to lead  him/her to a real language competence.

A good dictionary I found...

When Professor Fajardo started to ask us assumptions about terminology, we immediately were run over by some things that were forgot and supposed to be known. I just look for something useful and I found this:

 Immediately I looked for the terminology "Critical Applied Linguistics" which didn't allow me to sleep since that day (laugh) and I want to share with you mates what according to the dictionary the expression means.

Critical Applied Linguistics:   An approach that applies theories and methods of CRITICAL THEORY to problems in language education, literacy, discourse analysis, language the workplace, translation, and other language related domains.

Well, now I have to ask for "What is CRITICAL THEORY?"

Critical Theory: Originally form of social theory now also used to refer to an educational philosophy and movement that emphasizes the importance of critical examination of topics and practices where issues of social justice are at stake. The goal of critical theory is to identify, confront, and resolve problems of injustice through the processes of awareness, reflection, and argumentation. Language and language use is an important focus of critical theory since language is believed to play a key role in creating or maintaining power and in expression ideological positions because it represents participants’' values either directly or indirectly. Empowerment and emancipation from the constraints of social institutions and structures are key themes in most critical approaches.

We weren't too far away of the concept, were we?

"Being a Linguist" and "A semilingual starts" by Crystal, D (My reflections).

Reflections before the class

To start with my reflections I must confess, that I was scared and worried when I looked at my M.A schedule at first and it said "General Linguistics". Inmeadetely I thought "Gosh I have to buy that Saussure's book/manual or whatever" again and starting over reading trying to figure out the words and terminology which were not very clear for me as my Linguistics teachers were all the time talking in such a boring way that everybody ended up by falling asleep. Fortunately, honestly talking, I felt in love with the syllabus as It made me feel that there is something else behind so many readings and words which try to give Linguistics an unreachable status like a beautiful star you can't get. I haven't been so anxious about a Linguistic class never before. I think as Crystal, D said being a Linguistic is not just talking languages and master them, actually is being interested in them, and for me my dear friends being interested in languages is being interested in Linguistics. 
Every time we wonder about what activities incorporate to our classrooms or which strategy could work better to our students, we are wondering about what applied Linguistics, for example, always thinks about. Teaching and Learning a second/foreign language actually means not only to take into account the approaches and methods but also learning to decode the language so it could be interesting, useful, meaningful and logic to our learners and that means somehow to enrolled into Linguistics and all what that means.
We can say that Linguistic, as the science of Language, is not only a matter of knowing so many things that you don't even understand the real use of them. Being a Linguist is like a superhero of the language. Crystal D  (2008) describes it as dream words "(...)acoustics, anatomy, medicine, education, psychology, sociology, anthropology, geography, mathematics, computer science" (p.14) that push you to ask, wonder, look for, observe and enquire about almost everything that is connected to the language which actually means everything.
Since we are children, we are face to many things related to the world of words. The how's, when's, why's start to go around like a bunch of treasures waiting to be opened. We want adults to sort out problems and friends to help us in the discovery of those worlds and words. As humans, we start to get "linguistic intuitions" to understand and communicate. And when we are just starting to understand, there is another language waiting for us at school and then our small bodies start catching "ways of talking" and that process in one way or another make us different and more sensible to issues that learning a language could carry out.
To finish the reflections I have some questions to be brought to class.

•  Have we ever wondered about how we get into the world of Languages?
• Has Linguistics or the study of languages changed our minds or ways of thinking? Does that make us different from others?
• Is this Crystal's personal description of Language processing a way to understand better what Psycholinguistics is looking for?