The Language Centre (LC) of UABJO runs semester courses on six different
languages (English, French, Italian, Japanese, German and Spanish), and a B. A. in TEFL. It
has around 1500 students and most of them are enrolled in English. The BA has around 150
full-time students.
The students at the Language Centre are young adults and adults from 18 years old
upward. All of them have finished their preparatory school, some are studying an
underdegree and others are working as professionals or doing a postdegree. There are not
few that are just studying languages, this means that they are enrolled in more than one
course at the same time.
The common English courses are 80 hours long. The sessions last 50 minutes and are
held the five weekdays at the same time everyday. Class size varies from level to level. In
the first levels there are around 40 students and in the upper levels no more than 25 students.
More than 50% of the students drop out during the first levels. There are eight English
levels, from elementary to upper-intermediate. Although the term upper-intermediate is
often used and accepted in the literature, its use here is very relative, since there is no
institutional procedure that assures that we are talking about the same degree of competence.
At the end of the eighth semester the students are supposed to be able to pass the First
Certificate Cambridge exam, however, since this exam is not compulsory it is difficult to
generalise on the achievement of the whole population.
The teachers of the Language Centre have very different backgrounds. Some of them
are foreigners and others are Mexican, although the former outnumbers the latter in ten to
one. Being a foreign teacher in the LC does not mean being a native speaker language
teacher since some of the English teachers are Swiss, French, Dutch and German. Education-
wise, teachers are also very different. Some already have an MA (in TEFL and in other
areas). Two have recently finished their Diploma in TESOL. Others hold a BA in different
areas and there are still a few that have not got any degree. Of these, some are currently
studying a BA in TESOL run by the British Council.
The LC was opened 20 years ago and seniority is a very important factor in the
university. According to this, the teachers of the LC can be divided into three groups: "old-
timers", teachers that have been working there for 15 years or more; "settled" teachers, who
have less than 15 years experience but more than three and have already decided to stay in
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