Innovation in Language Learning

The focus of this work brings to the surface, on the one hand, the ways English teachers in Bogotá have been portrayed in mass media and how its public image has been affected, ignoring English teachers’ own voices, provoking silencing and inequality. In this sense, through collecting statements delivered by the main newspapers in their web versions, it was possible to define some particular issues which are silenced or promoted regarding the English Teacher and the English teaching in Colombia, particularly in its capital Bogotá since the establishment of current governmental programs (e.g. Bogotá Bilingue, acuerdo 253 del Concejo de Bogotá 2006). On the other hand, it explores the role of British Council as an “access point” (Giddens, 1994), a place where the expert system fixes the low level of the English language foreign speakers, also it promotes a native-like identity that excludes other ways of being English teachers. The role of institutions and their relationship with a phenomenon as the subjectivity construction of English teachers during the last ten years was also perceivable in the collection of statements. These data have been put into circulation by the analyzed mass media, sometimes making some features more relevant than others and shaping the image of the English teacher.