eureka. your-eek-ah?. uerika. hmmm?

So atlast I have figured out the "x" factor in Chile which has f*cked the system up, slowed down all business, and caused a huge fart on all progress here.

First off, let me explain. My job is to train, support, and evaluate all the English Teachers of the Elementary schools (kindergarten through 4th grade) in roughly 7 manicupalities of Chile. First off, must do a x numeber training hours at every manicupality offering innovative ideas, games, activities, etc. PLUS teaching them exactly how to navigate through our program properly, methodically, and efficiently. Mind you about 20% of these professors actually speak English...the rest have taken a few courses in their lifetime and have some sort of mention in English but haven't used it in decades with pronuncaition like Nah-may = name and dah-tay = date. So, all of my work is done in spanish.

Our program builds an english base that allows these young children to successfully develope the 41 sounds of the English language (Spanish only has 28). A child is born with the ability to speak any language and record every sound. At 6 months this child has officially identified all the sounds of their mother language. At age 10 the mind officially closes which allows a child to capture/learn foreign sounds...after that one must use a different part of the brain to develope language which is much more difficult. Once one reaches puberty never again can one manipulate his mouth in such a way to create a foreign language without an accent. SO......if we want to see English speakers in this world time to start really driving it into the elementary schools. Because by the time they get to the University, well it's going to be A LOT tougher and shaking the accent will be nearly impossible.

We use songs to teach the pronunciation (did I mention I went to a real recording studio where myself and other gringos were recorded for these CDs), as well as teacher text books (that are bilingual with instructions in both english and spanish) that spell the words phonetically for the teachers to pronunce correctly. By the time the child has reached 4th grade they will have recorded all 41 sounds of the English language and trained the mouth to make these sounds as well as having learning over 600 words. Now of course this doesn't make them bilingual, heck they wouldn't even be conversational..but by the time they graduated highschool after english courses reviewing all that they had learned as children and developing the gramatical structure of sentences....they will be on the road to success in their English endeveurs.

crud. i forgot that this entry was going to be about the x factor. well its "accountability" but i think i'll save that entry for a later date. for now, it felt good to pound it out what it is I do, and the challenge I have in front of me. Teaching teachers to teach!