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?