Your experience learning English at the university / A general reflection

The Faculty of Social Sciences of Chile University, it’s located in the Ñuñoa district. The faculty of Social Sciences includes the careers of: Anthropology, Sociology, Psychology and Preschool Education.In the case of these four careers, the undergraduate curriculum has had to adjust to changing labor market. In this way, the faculty has implemented in our university and faculty “not optional English courses” for all the students with the objective that students have a basic level of English to help them in their studies, this is why the English course comprises four levels of difficulty: Starter, Beginner, Pre-Intermediate and Intermediate.

When I entered the year 2008 to the career of Anthropology, had to take the Pre-Intermediate course and this year I have to take last level of the course: Intermediate. I believe that the number of students per course is ideal, because it allows us learn in a better way, but I have to say that the initial screening method for the distribution of students by level is ineffective, because I’ve see that the courses have been formed quite heterogeneous in terms of the their English level of the students.

The course of Pre-intermediate and Intermediate level I think it has a great organization, because the units help to the teachers and student to organize the contents of the course, producing an order in terms of complexity of each thematic unit.
The experience of taking these courses has been pretty good, because even in the case that we have seven curricular courses in the year in which we also have to had regular marks to pass them, the teachers have shown great willingness to teach us, despite we have been a little irresponsible with some homework’s.

I had English courses when I was at school, but this one -at university- was very useful, especially for my other subjects, because we have to read a lot of English papers and this kind of course was a very practical tool for us, like students.

In conclusion I think that the english language is a major academic and professional tool that improves the performance of a professional of any career and in the same time, - especially because English language has positioned it worldwide has as a universal language- opens many doors for studies of any kind –like doctoral studies- in other countries where their native language it is not even the english, like German, Japan or New Zealand. So I think that the implementation of Thus I think it was a good idea from the faculty of Social Sciences, the implement of non-optional English courses for each career.

Challenges in your discipline

Well as the world has changed, the discipline of anthropology has had to adapt to political, economic and social changes that have happened in the world and especially, here in the country.
In the case of Social Anthropology, work areas and job performance are quite wide, for which the challenges for being a good professional has steadily increased.
In the case of the technological area, the career of anthropology has had to develop new programs that implement the utilization of statistical programs -SPSS- for the formation of integrated professional, not requiring the "outsourcing" of other people for the elaboration of quantitative research methodologies.

In the area of social issues, anthropology has had to evolve and adapt to the context of modern society, changing many times its object of investigation,, I mean, referring not only to the study of "exotic societies" or ethnic people -as Geertz or Malinowski-, but -as I set the Political Anthropology- develop research on problems of modern society, such as public policies on health and education.

With these new problems, the study methodologies have changed, trying this time to address groups of people on a "macro" level, to generate answers that can generalize and solve global problems that are developing in society. However, these changes have resulted in"an Anthropology" that often does not have her limits very clear.

I believe that, in despite that anthropology had lost its "identity" is necessary due to "disciplinary context" that this discipline uses supplementary tools that social sciences can deliver. For example, the sociological approach within anthropology is a good complement to the social and cultural analysis of certain patterns of behavior - regarding such an issue-contingent in Chile- the theme of "public safety" as part of public policy of the country and even in a global level.

The importance of these challenges and improvements that have appeared, I think that are trying to give to the labor area a “concrete anthropology”.

It's a long hard road and we as students have a lot to do, however, must be done if we want to be good professionals in this new context both locally and globally.

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