A BRIEF SUMMARY OF THE INTERVIEW ABOUT OUR MAJOR WITH NORMA CHAVARRO, HEAD OF THE DEPARTMENT OF FOREIGN LANGUAGES.

Judy Villanueva

Publicado en Capital Letter No. 3

Mayo de 2003

Nowadays, our major is changing in many aspects; we are conscious about some problems that we have. For this reason we decided to interview the Head of the Department, professor Norma Chavarro, about her point of view on the career and which our future as philologists is. This interview showed that one of the most important problems we have is the misinformation among students, teachers and heads of our department. Our major has almost 800 students, 80 teachers and the administrative staff. However, almost nobody or nobody knows what Philology is. The objectives of the directives, teachers and students are different. Maybe this is the reason why people do not feel identified with the career; we do not know what major we belong to (Linguistics, Classical Languages, English or Pedagogy).

But what is Philology? This is the essential question for us. According to Diccionario de la Real Academia de la Lengua Española,

Philology is "the science that studies one culture based on its language". Are we really studying this science? Does our current curricular program answer this idea of Philology? Norma Chavarro thinks that this major has a wrong name because it is evident that students are going to be English teachers, not philologists. She also explained in the interview that now the Department has a new project in which there would be some changes: the title of the career, Licenciatura en Lenguas Extranjeras instead of Licenciatura en Filologia e Idiomas; the length, it would take five years instead of four; and the emphasis on Pedagogy, this subject would be stronger than in our current program. However, this is just a proposal and students have not defined who they are.

This conducts us to other questions: What do we students think about the changes? Which is our position? Has the department counted on our opinion as students? We are in a point where neither teachers nor students have a direct and institutionalized channel of communication. A good example of the misinformation, as a cause of our problems is present from the moment prospect students intend to apply to the career. The names that promote the major appear under the headings of English, French and German without specification that they are degrees in Philology. For this reason, future students do not know what they are actually going to study. Now the answer to our question is evident, we need to communicate to each other in order to improve our major.

Thanks to the current juncture, some groups have been organized in order to understand and solve some worrying situations regarding the naming of the new Principal of the university, our position about him, and what our positions about the new policies are.Furthermore, those meetings are becoming a place of debate where the students, teachers and the heads of our career can share their points of view. Maybe this is a good element in order to construct better communication among the Philology community. This is an invitation for all people who are interested in improving our major and working together for getting common objectives.