English programme

I think the English programme in English IV is suitable with a higher level in the language. This programme is very practical and varied: we have to do blogs, videos, and oral activities.

The problem with English programme is the previous courses. I only did English III before, and that course was very practical too, we didn`t learn about the language theory like times of the sentences. We learn some words of the vocabulary, but that is not enough.

About the other courses, like English I and II, I have listened comments that they are not the best in the teaching of the theory, and they are very practical too. I hear that the English I students had to do theatre performance with socks, and they didn`t know a lot about the language.

My great critic of the university’s English programme is the practical sense. The people can`t start speak English without know nothing about the language. The English programme, I think, needs more theory content, especially in their first courses.

English language in Chile

In a globalized world whose country of greatest influence is United States, I think is necessary to learn English because we can connect and talk with people of the entire world.

But I think is an error the importance of English in schools. With the need to entry in this globalized world, the governments boost English programs and they don’t care about other cultures in Chile and their languages.

One iconic example is the Mapuche culture and Mapudungun. The Mapudungun is a beautiful language that is ingrained in the self knowledge and in connection with the nature. But the Chilean governments prefer the English language.

And how many people who learned English in school really use that language? Probably a minor part, and, I think, most of them became from rich schools.  I have an example for that. When I was a child I was in one of that rich schools. There I learned all I know about English today. For the other side, in my adolescence I went to a lyceum that goes people from different social origins. There the English class was very bad, I didn’t learn anything much that I learned before.

The social difference is even in the teaching of English language. The rich people can enter in this globalized world as opposed to poor people.  

Journalism investigation

When I will finish my career I would like to do a postgraduate in journalism investigation in Universidad de Chile. I think that will be like two years after I graduated, because I want to do a working holiday in Canada and other things in that lapse of time.

The journalism investigation is a topic that I like a lot, since I entered to the career. Ciper, I think, is one of the best means in the country; they inspired me to deepen in this topic.

The investigation is one of the essential parts of the journalism and with this postgraduate study I can learn about the management of the sources, delimit the topic of the investigation, the legislation about journalism, the audiovisual realization, etc.

The sources and their management is one of those things that are, I think, complicated of the journalism. I sometimes have troubles with the sources. Sometimes they have a strange schedule for interviews, or they simply don´t answer my calls. With this postgraduate I think I can drive better my relation with the sources. Consider a lot of options for the sources for example. On other way, I think that those things it can be teach in the career, considering the price of this postgraduate.

The enrollment cost $131.250 and the tariff… $1.444.896 ! To pay those big numbers I think I would be an “encalillado” person. The costs of the university.  

Astronauts and journalists

In my childhood, when I was between 3 – 7 years old, I stayed a great part of the night seeing the moon. My family said that I will be an astronaut. And I wanted a lot, but the circumstances and the years changes to one a lot, you know.

When I was 14 -15 years old I started to read a lot, and my preferences changed very fast. First I wanted to be a lawyer, in fact, was one of my options in the postulation process of university. But I saw journalism a very attractive career.

When I saw that a lot of my favorites writers were journalists I liked a lot the idea to be one. But the most important factor in my decision was the social impact of journalism. With this career I can know other realities and people that in other instances I couldn’t have done it, and I can help them, maybe not directly, but I can help to make visible their situation.

With journalism, maybe I can´t go to the outer space, but I can travel -and I want very much- a lot in the planet earth.  

Jorge Teillier

Hi! Today I will talk about another poet, this time the chosen one is Jorge Teillier.

Jorge Teillier was a Chilean poet, the maximum representation of Larica poetry, a movement centered in the earthly roots, the nostalgia of the homeland.

Teillier was born in a 24 of june, in the year 1935. His homeland was Lautaro, a town near to Temuco. His experiences in the mythical south inspired him a lot of his poems. Other topics he touch is love in the memory, the childhood, and in a lesser extent, the political poetry.

The political poetry was one of his major faults, like said Teillier. He wanted to write more of that topic, but he didn´t felt comfortable writing that. He said that a poem never does feed the poor. He was more comfortable like a guardian of the Lautaro’s culture, against the cosmopolitanism of the 50's generation.  

The Jorge Teillier’s work is one of the greatest poetry of Chile, I think. His sensitivity, and the way simple and effective oh his verses, makes him very close to all the people who want to read him. Like Alfonsina Storni, I recommend to all of you.

Free topic: Alfonsina Storni

Since teenager I like a lot to read novels and poetry. This year I realized that I read almost men. I wanted to read a woman. In july I found an anthology of Alfonsina Storni’s poetry in the house of an uncle. That day I read some poems. I liked them a lot.

Alfonsina Storni was an argentinian poet and journalist. She was born in the year 1892. Her first book was published in the year 1916. Her poetry, in her beginnings, is very very melancholic, a constant pain for love. But after she enter to feminism circles, that experience changed her poetry. In those year, she was more confrontational, in a world extremely machist, dominated by men.

She was a single mother, added to her feminism, she was target of critics. I like her a lot, I loved her confrontational personality, and helped me to see another visión of poetry, besides of men’s vision. With her poems, I can sense her pain of live in a men´s world. I recommend to everybody to read her work.    

My best holidays: the 4th region

My best holidays was this Winter. At the beggining of july I went with my father to the fourth región. In that place, there are a great part of my father’s family (uncles, cousins. Near of 100 persons), family that I didn´t know before.

We first went to La Ligua. There we stay one night at the house of a cousin of my father. There were other family members, all of them very friendly. The next we went to my family’s countryside, in Los Trigos, a place near to Ovalle.

In Los Trigos, an uncle told me that he need help to work in a mine of gold. I accepted. The mine is in a place that is two hours from Ovalle. There I worked some days. In the mine work three people: My uncle, and two oldmans, one of 65 years old and the other of 83. The experience of work in the mine was great, and the talk with those oldmans change my mind in a lot of things.

After, approximately, one week in the mine, I went to Ovalle, with my father, who stayed in Los Trigos. In that day was the birthday of my godmother. In her house I knew like 20 family members. I saw features of them in my personality. I loved to know that part of the family.  

My experience with blog activities

I think the blog activity is not a good way to learn english. It’s more practice than English theory, and that, with people who didn´t have a good English education, is a bad way to know this language.  

In spite of this critic, I had a lot of practice in English with the blog activities. I don´t write in English constantly, so this activities helped me to refresh all the things that I know in this language, like the times in the sentence and it ordering, besides the vocabulary.

Other good thing in the blog activities is the possibility that we can know with our classmates and the teacher. Activities like “the best drunk story” are very lightweight to do, and very entertaining to read.   

Finally, I think the blog activities are entertaining, but they are not suitable with people who don´t know English very well. English three needs more theory than practice activities. There are a lot of thing that we don´t know, times in the sentence, vocabulary, and things that didn´t teach in the school, and very useful in our future work. 

The Transfest

My best reporting story was in my first year of university, in the year 2015. We had to do a chronicle for a subject, and I didn´t have a topic. I search in internet, and I found an event in Facebook: the Transfest.

The Transfest is a festival dedicated to transgender persons. That year was the first celebration of the Transfest. I saw women talking with the voice of a man and men with the voice of a woman, in that moment, that was strange for me. 

Fort he chronicle, I had to interview someone of the Transfest. When I was thinking to who do my interview, I saw a woman on the festival’s stage; it was Claudia Rodriguez, a transgender poet that was reading her work. 

Her poetry interested me so much. When she get down of the stage, I walk beside her. I say hi, and we started a conversation. That day I take awareness of the reality of transgender persons, their diary problems and the constant problems that they have with the society. That conversation it was really good for me.  

Mass culture and cultural industry

My favorite subject in this semester is “Mass culture and cultural industry”. This subject is shared with cinema classmates. The professor is Felipe Espinosa, and the way he does classes it is based in the presentation of slides. He is very didactic.   

In “Mass culture and cultural industry” we talk about, like the name says, the implication and problems of the mass culture. We have to read a lot of theorists that talk about the central problem of the subject, like the Marxist theory, Walter Benjamin, Theodor Adorno, Max Horkheimer, etc.

My favorite part of the subject was the part when we read about the critic theory. I like the Marxist vision of the theorists of the Frankfurt school a lot, and the critique they do to the historical materialism.

A thing that I don’t like about the subject is the mandatory making of weekly works about some aspects of the subject. The work consits, frequently, of three questions that are often very redundant between them.

But that thing is irrelevant in comparison to the interesting texts that we have to read, and the critic vision that they have with cultural and structural construction of capitalism.

La cumbre del rock

My favorite concert was this year, in January seventh. I went with three friends to “La cumbre del rock” in the national stadium.

I never did go in my life to a lot of concerts, so this was an special opportunity to see some bands both. Other reason that go to “La cumbre” was an special chance, was the last concert of Jorge González, thing that I enjoyed a lot, hear the classics of this man was awesome.

Other singers and bands that did concerts in “La cumbre del rock” was Planeta No, Mon Laferte, Ases Falsos, Joe Vasconcellos, Los Miserables, Javiera & Los Imposibles, Los Tres, etc. We saw the majority of those bands wrapped in a big heat. That was a hot day.

I specially remember the concert of Los Tres, it was my favorite moment of the day. I like a lot that band, and I never heard them before, so I sang with all my voice all their classics. When I returned to my house, my voice was exhausting and my skin was very toasted.        

Fog night

Brassai was a French photographer. He is one of my favorites photographers, I like a lot his night photos, and the way he use the light.

The picture what I choose is one of Paris’ streets taken by Brassai. The photo shows in first flat a bicycle, and in the background we can see two persons walking and some lights. All this wrapped in a thick fog.    

The picture was taken in the night, when the fog impregnates the streets. I like a lot the contrast in the picture: the bicycle and the persons are shadows in the street, and the tiny lights increase the contrast. I like the Brassai’s vision of night, his pictures has a startling feeling.

I also like the photo because it remembers me the Coyhaique’s night. There, the nights has an intense fog too, like the deep dark eclipsed with some lights in the street. 

One of my favorites Fridays

My best drunk story was in the year 2014. In that year I was in Coyhaique, in my last year of school. I specially remember that day because it was an union between my past and, in that moment, my present; the people I knew since I was a kid, and the people who I knew in that year.

I invited my classmates to my house that Friday. They come with a lot of beer and wine. We had to get drunk, because we had to go to a school party, and there we can´t drink alcohol. Anyway, we drink the most of the beer and then we went to the school. There was a little boring. We stayed there like two hours, and then we returned to my house.

In the journey of the return began the good part of the night. We passed in front of a bar. There was a group of drunk people. They were the friends of my childhood, I didn´t saw them in years. They recognized me first, we talked a moment and they went to my house, with more beer in their hands.

We talked with my childhood friends about the past, the good moments when we were kids. But then a classmate appeared in the door with three foreign girls, one was american, other Australian, and the last was French.

All the people in that house talked a lot, about anything. Outside was raining, so I was happier. With the foreign girls we talked about their culture, and all about their countries. The sense of the alcohol and marihuana in my body, the good conversations with my childhood friends, my classmates, and with the foreign girls, and the constant rain; made that Friday one of the best that I remember.   

Why did I choose journalism?

In my last year of school I had not decided what to study. I was between law and journalism. I enjoy a lot the literature and the reading, so they were great options to me. Finally, I decide to study journalism, because of the impact, the experimentation in the writing, and especially, the social work of this job; beside my PSU’s score.

In my third year of university, I am a little disappointed about the career, especially with some teachers, who are lazy to make classes and to check works. Anyway, there are other teachers who motivate you with the career.

In spite of all, I still like journalism. Know other realities, the writing and the social work, are the factors why I am still here. In the future, I would like to do chronicles in a newspaper. 

Auto Biography: south to south

My name is Francisco Troncoso Guzmán. I was born in 1996, in Coyhaique. My childhood was very pleasant in that city. I liked a lot the weather (specially the snow) and the people.

When I was 13 years old, because of my parent’s work, I changed of city. I arrived to Puerto Varas. Puerto Varas is a beautiful city, with a strong influence of German settlers. There it rains a lot, which I love.  But in Puerto Varas there are a lot of rich people too (cuicos), something that I hate. Fortunately, I studied in a simple school.

The nostalgia for Coyhaique grew up over the years. So, in the year 2014, when I was 17 years old, I returned, alone, to my native city. In Coyhaique I finished my last year of school. It was a great year.

My hobbies are the photography, the literature, reading and writing. For the last things I decided to study journalism.