El pasado martes 5 de octubre de 2004, se llevó a cabo la Inauguración académica de la Licenciatura en Enseñanza de la Lengua inglesa a la cual asistieron el Rector de la Institución, la Directora del Departamento de Humanidades e Idiomas, Aura Margarita Calle, la Coordinadora del Programa, María Clemencia González y el Vicerrector académico, José Germán López.
A continuación, se anexan las palabras del Rector de la Universidad Tecnológica de Pereira, Ing. Luis Enrique Arango Jiménez, presentadas durante el acto académico.


BIENVENIDA ESTUDIANTES
LICENCIATURA DE LA ENSEÑANZA DE LA LENGUA INGLESA.

Good Morning every body:

When the doctor Clemencia Gonzalez asked me to talk in this meeting I thought of the opportunity to exercise my English especially to let you know all of you than I am studying too. It seems irrelevant but it’s important to show every body that it’s never late to learn a language.

I have heard excellent comments about you. You are doing very well in your classes. You are preparing to be second language teachers in English fulfilling a clear need of the departamento de Risaralda. So far we have had to import teachers from the outside or even improvise teachers with poor results in terms of learning. It’s incredible but after years of teaching English in secondary school our educational system in not able to prepare our students adequately, most of them come to the university in bad conditions.

Nowadays is highly important to know English as a means to be competitive . It’s not enough to graduate or to get a diploma to obtain a job. You must have extra skills in order to get it. Besides that a good competence in English is an open door to get opportunities to study abroad. Many scholarships offers are lost because the applicants don’t pass the English test. It happens for example with the Fulbright program.

As you should know all the students in this university as a requirement to graduate have to take an exam to show sufficiency in English, not every body accepts this requirement some people want to modify the rule. It would be a step back in the educational goals and while it depends on me I assure you I won’t allow it Some students don’t take it seriously, when they take their English classes they don’t study as they should. Students go to class as they go to a party, without assuming any further responsibilities; they don’t study at home, don’t do homework, don’t prepare their oral presentations, don’t read, don’t study for the exams and obviously don’t succeed. The worst part of this story is that students are careless about it.

As I am sure you share my point of view, I would like to invite you to help us persuading others to change their perception of English language.

Your teachers are pleased with you because they have noticed a big difference compared to regular students of ILEX.

I have heard that you are planning to publish a newspaper in English. That’s a good sign
of encouraging others . I offer you all my support in these kind of ideas.

A few days ago listening to Universitaria stereo, I felt happy hearing a program made only in English, but the most important thing is to know that one of the Ilex"s students participated in the program.

I don"t know how frequently they are participating in those programs, however I wish to encourage you to do it too. While we introduce English culture in different activities we could help to overcome the lack of interest in the language with initiatives like that one..

I Don"t know either if you know that we have an agreement with Missouri university to send people there to improve their English skills. Recently a group of teachers went there and brought excellent experiences.

I hope some day you can live the same experience later on; although the cost of the program implies a restriction, maybe later we can find better offers.

Someone asked me why teachers in their careers don’t have the same requirement the students have to graduate, I mean if students have to know English in some way why teachers don’t. It is not easy to answer to that question. In the long run it would be no difference. The students as well as the teachers will have to fulfill the same requirements.

I have to express my joy about the new program We needed it. It’s a dream come true. The opening has been excellent.

I would like to thank Dr Clemencia Gonzalez, Dr Javier Vanegas, Dr Jairo Guevara, and the rest of the teachers and of course all of you who made the program possible . Also thanks to the superior council and the academic council who support the original idea despite of the difficulties we had in the past.

Congratulations and good luck to all of you

LUIS ENRIQUE ARANGO JIMENEZ
Rector

Pereira, 5 de Octubre de 2004