Good Advice

Being confused is not OK, not at all, especially for an educator.

Culture cannot be a higher value than common sense or Science when it comes to Education. 

The objectives with education, most basic, are universal: we want the student to increase their range or depth of skills as a result of attending our courses, appreciate the process, not only the result, and understand the true meaning of assessment, as well as experience it. 

Improving our quality of existence and living is something positive, so that we should all be happy when we are learning. 

Everyone knows the difference between a true educator and a charlatan or someone who has been allowed to educate without having ever bothered studying the Art of Education properly. 

The reason why we know is, for instance, that their assessments are poorly planned, executed, or marked. 

Nothing matters more than the assessment, since that is how society will see the student's efforts (Outer Reality). 

Charlatans commit crimes during the exercise of their official profession, so say they discriminate between one student and another when receiving or answering questions. 

If the student experiences the feeling of oppression, they are usually having their basic rights violated.



When they identify those feelings in their Inner Reality, they classify the educator as inadequate. 



Teach for Freedom is based on Paulo Freire's thinking: education that frees us from oppression instead.

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Welcome to Down Under

The current Australian support systems, in place to optimise the investment of international students in adaptation to the demands of a new culture and people, are in real need of reformulation.



They frequently make international postgraduate students experience feelings that connect to emptiness. 

Through close contact with good writing and intellectuals that belong to the Writing Scenery of Academia or their circles, we get to conclusions that matter. 


One of the  main issues is that administrators have been belittling the capacity of judgement and assessment of very well known companies, such as those producing the IELTS and TOEFL exams. 



That is an ethical matter: they themselves chose those exams of proficiency, from those particular companies, as parameters that give them a final verdict on suitability and adequacy. 



The person who comes from overseas to do research in Australia and is judged competent enough in the English language to attend their postgraduate courses or environments needs eloquence, cultural understanding and items of that type. 



They don't really need more courses on the English language.



Experts in writing, so best Australian writers, the most eloquent and creative, drawn from the group of proper academics (experts with formation in Education, interest in really improving the quality of the expression and thinking of their students, if possible to their own level and so on) are our best weapon in this fight. 


What a phenomenal waste of resources the current systems of support are and what a difference it is simply stopping to read good prose, of people who really know what they are writing about and master the art of communication in the English language. 


We should all be interested in academic communications; proper academic communications. 


It is of fundamental importance to measure pre-existing vocabulary and compare results from before and after our courses.


There is also style of writing, complexity and layers or meaning... 



Language course providers are not really worried about what they should.



Universities should invest, in a massive manner, in this process, of adaptation of the overseas research student to our culture, language and people. 


In terms of academic communications, the best choice is a range of residents chosen from the group of best writers of Australia (poetry, lyric essay, academic essay assessed solely on the grounds of linguistics, etc.), full immersion of the imported asset into that universe, so students living under the same roof as those (conversing with proper writers opens the windows of discovery to many), a range of planned activities to share culture insights (writing scripts, playing roles, debating experiences, etc.) and others. 


Integration between the academics teaching the courses and residents will contribute, in a meaningful manner, to the integral development in that arena, so that guest lecturing should be a weapon that is frequently triggered. 


Expression, level of skills and eloquence may not mean much in Mathematics, when the sigmatoid is connected to its popular sense, but it certainly means a lot in Philosophy and foundations of Mathematics. 


All mistakes that are gross in both areas, Philosophy and Mathematics, come from misconceptions and misunderstandings in what regards the foundations. 


All connects, in a direct way, to our skills in Communication. 



We cannot be good professors if we don't communicate well.



We cannot be good researchers if we don't master the Art of Communication. 


The better we can do there, the better we will do in Academia and that seems to be a settled item. 

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New Parameter: Density

Translation is an actual profession but it is not treated as such. 


The disrespect for the Art of Translation is historic: Easier that all camels pass through the bottom of a needle, meaning all camels that exist on earth, than a politician praises the work of translators. 


Both interpreters and translators got a few movies to tell the populace about their dramas and importance (Website) but those have produced no meaningful effect on people's minds this far.


In Translation Techniques, Bloom's Taxonomy is used to explain the value of these professions. 


We now suggest that we have a list of standard parameters to evaluate a text and therefore the difficulty involved in translating. 


One more interesting parameter (on top of those mentioned in Translation Techniques) is Density. 


Density is the weight attributed to ideas or world references, not necessarily population of sigmatoids per sentence.


Amount should also be a factor but a factor that is inferior to density. 


Observe this extract, which comes from a text written by Patricia Waugh:

The good translator departs from the original text, travels through its emanations to the original text culture and people, gets into a Reference Finder Vehicle to reach equivalent world references in the target culture and people, then travels through their connection lines to the corresponding sigmatoids, which finally express the idea contained in the original text to perfection or to the Superior Semantic Limit (here referring to Real Analysis, Mathematics) in the target language and culture. 

The density of Patricia Waugh's extract is enormous: It is almost as if every couple of sigmatoids leads to a new world.

This idea may also be suitable to evaluate difficulty in teaching language: there is obviously more value to the teacher who is extremely eloquent and skilled in using language than to the other, who has basic mastery. 

Besides, the audience, the target people, also count: the more eloquent and skilled they are in their mother tongue, the more difficulty the teacher has when teaching them another language, since they obviously demand much more knowledge and many more skills than the basic user or average learner. 

And the style of the writing is also of paramount importance: a good translator conveys the author's ideas to perfection but an excellent translator conveys both the writing style and the ideas of the author to perfection instead. 

In the writing theories we currently teach, the concept that most closely relates to what we just mentioned is Voice (style, eloquence, most prevalent ideas and so on). 

Excellent translators are those that properly represent the author's persona, in terms of writing, in the target culture and language through their work.

Excellent translators can therefore be called voice of the author in the target language and culture. 

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