Post three: Reflection about chapter seven ("Teaching English") of “Down on the Island” by Jim Cooper.

Christopher Colon discovered Puerto Rico on November 19, 1493. Then on July 25, 1898, during the Spanish-American War, the United States of America (USA) took Puerto Rico as a colony and they keep this relationship until present. Puerto Ricans first language is Spanish because it was our first colonizer (Spain) language and the second language is the English for our actual colony relation with the USA. Puerto Ricans always have had the problem of the English learning. The known author Jim Cooper expose in “Down on the Island” the overall problem of English learning in Puerto Rico. Cooper summarizes in chapter seven (Teaching English) his experiences, as an educator, with the English teaching system in Puerto Rico. Cooper also exposes in the reading how the policy on English language teaching in Puerto Rico has always been involved with the Puerto Rico politics.

Definitively, the readings of “The Roots of Caribbean Identity: Language, Race and Ecology” by Peter Roberts and “Down on the Island” by Jim Cooper are strictly linked, because both expose how the language is the pillar of a society. Robert and Cooper describe how the language is a factor of identity in a person and how the political identity can influence the vernacular language of a country. Roberts describes how the language is a universal human factor and "a factor of place". In Cooper reading, language was taken as a factor of place, which is determined by the geography. For example in Puerto Rico the vernacular language is the Spanish because we have the Spain culture. We can add that Puerto Ricans are considered Hispanic and Latin because our geographical territory culture and language is very similar.    

I am absolutely agree with Cooper when he describes the big mistake of the Department of Education of Puerto Rico of adapting the “oral/aural” method in the public schools of Puerto Rico when this is a system from the University of Michigan (an USA university). This is very true because for example my mother is product of a public school in Puerto Rico and when she graduated she didn’t know English. She learned English in the University. Also, in my own experience my English classes in my private school were not enough to help me learn English, because I did not assist to a bilingual school. I had to travel to USA to learn English and improve it. I went to a intensive English summer program at State University of New York at Oswego (SUNY-Oswego) to learn English. The problem in Puerto Rico with learning English is that you can learn English in the school but, as Cooper mentioned in his reading, you just learn it for a test or the class and you never practice it again because in Puerto Rico people don’t speak in English, you always heard people speaking in Spanish and is weird listen someone speaking in English. Therefore, the students learn the language in their school but they just use it for few ours per week in the English class and that is it. In my personal opinion, you might think that when you want to learn something you need to practice it in fact to improve it. The only way to learn English from my personal experience is learn with a good professor that teach you good grammar, writing, reading and oral skills and finally use these in your daily life to practice and improve it.