wyvern:extra
In Memoriam: Alicia B. Gonzalez G. Canton
Alicia B. Gonzalez G. Canton pioneered the teaching of
foreign languages at the Autonomous University of Yucatan (UADY) in
Mexico, establishing there the first language centre in 1977.
Her enthusiasm and foresight were instrumental in a long and fruitful
link with the British Council. With their support she obtained yearly
summer scholarships for her teachers in top UK universities, and
eventually, in subsequent years since 1986, three full ones to do the MA
in Applied Linguistics here in Essex: for me, herself and another member
of staff. With this postgraduate preparation, we worked together in
another of her visionary enterprises, the original diploma course to
qualify in-service teachers of English at university level in the
Southeast region of Mexico, which was introduced in 1991 and was the
paradigm for future courses run by the British Council in the country.
Meanwhile, she formalised agreements with the universities of Leeds,
Warwick and Essex for annual stays of graduate students as native speaker
teachers of English at UADY.
In 1991, Alicia proposed the Ministry of Education and the British
Council, an innovative independent study programme based on the idea of
self-access centres for their joint venture ‘English for Higher Education
Students’. As a result in 1992, the first centre of this kind in Mexico
was launched in UADY. Today every state university has at least one. She
remained the head of this centre until 1999, when she began her PhD
research in Essex.
Despite her age, she was 66 then, she invested all her admirable energy
and zeal in the pursuit of the degree. Lamentably, she would not see the
culmination of her lifelong ambition for she passed away four days after
submitting her thesis.
She set an outstanding example of vision, determination and
achievement.Our memory of her will never die.
Humberto L. Cervera-Rosado
Department of Language and Linguistics
See also:
