The Master’s Degree in Foreign Language Teaching at Universidad Pedagógica Nacional (UPN) offers a number of professional chances for those involved. Thus, foreign language teachers will be able to take their teaching towards increasingly satisfactory and promising prospects by a careful and thoughtful reflection on their own practices.
Research on pedagogy and didactics of foreign languages involves deepening into cognitive and linguistic processes that drive learning a language by coping with driven communicative and intercultural phenomena as two languages come into contact besides deepest and critical analyzes of components of teaching-and-learning scenarios of foreign language. These topics, among others, are part of curricular contents of this master’s degree program, which is marked by a critical and methodological thoroughness.
Each student entering the program may choose among three emphases: English, French, and Spanish as a foreign language. This will allow the pupil to focus his/her attention on a particular pedagogical-linguistic process, including of course a great involvement in paths and debates that shape research on teaching foreign languages at the beginning of the 21st century. It is worth mentioning that specific emphasis in French has a choice of a double degree with University of Nantes, France.
Professor Fabián Cruz, a graduate of the English emphasis, says: “Studying for this master’s degree has given us a lot of paybacks; one of them is a recognition because you know UPN as a training teachers institution guarantees to change better practices in the classroom thanks to a development of critical thinking and research principles-and-techniques of education.”
Professor Patricia Moreno García, Coordinator of the Program, states that her greatest challenge is to bring research and teaching of three foreign languages into dialogue, considering the characteristics of each. It is remarkably interesting and satisfying to see the enrichment achieved in the program’s day-to-day work because of the academic, research and cultural exchange of professors and students.
This master’s degree gives our institution continues its commitment to a comprehensive postgraduate training that allows professors to contribute to a generation of structural changes that Colombia needs through the practice of their teaching.