Sistema Regional de Información
en línea para Revistas Científicas de América Latina,
el Caribe, España y Portugal

Seidlhofer (2005) describes the current status of English as an “unstable equilibrium.” In many ways this analogy regarding the current state of affairs with English language teaching (ELT) is appropriate. Taking a World Englishes (WE) perspective, this paper presents various mismatches between teaching goals and objectives vis-à-vis the teaching and learning outcomes in ELT. The paper then makes the argument that in order for more successful English language teaching and learning to take place, a pragmatic and humanistic approach needs to be adopted. An outline of such an approach is discussed.  

In young people’s speech, the reiteration of certain idiomatic expressions as constitutive of their identity and membership in a particular group is a common occurrence. This phenomenon is not distant to young people in Bogotá, in which they constantly use appreciative morphemes such as re- and super-. However, six years later, data was collected again by means of the same instrument employed in 2007. Therefore, this article presents a diachronic comparison between the data found in 2007 and 2013 in which both the frequency in use of these morphemes (re- and super-) and the social variable of socioeconomic stratification are considered. The general results show different trends in the three different socioeconomic levels. In the low levels, in 1 and 2, as established in Colombia, there was a significant increase in the use of the prefix re- in the year 2013 in comparison to 2007; in the middle levels, 3 and 4, also presented an important increase in the use of the morpheme super- in 2013; and, in the high levels, 5 and 6, in 2013, there was a decrease of the use of the prefix re-, but the use of the prefix superincreased meaningfully. In conclusion, it is evident that young people in Bogota continue using the above mentioned prefixes; although, there are variations in their use according to the socioeconomic level they belong to.

The aim of the present paper is to address the implications of the direct instruction of the linguistic typology of verbs of motion in English second-language learners. Results of a small-scale research study are reported in which students were exposed to typology instruction with the goal of increasing proficiency and target-like production. To this end, it was hypothesized that pre- and post-intervention writing samples would differ significantly in the appropriate use of expressions of motion, particularly those expressions employing English manner-of-motion verbs. Results confirmed this hypothesis and demonstrated that students achieve greater proficiency in motion-event expression when exposed to explicit instruction including negative evidence and aspects of the Conceptual Approach (White, 2012).

Material design is an important part in the teaching practices. This article describes the process of material design of a foreign language (FL) reading manual for undergraduate students at Universidad de Antioquia (Medellín, Colombia). Action research was used as methodological guide to design the manual. Four in-service English teachers participated in the process of the design and they took into account issues such as the program of reading comprehension I, readings that contain cultural information and active background knowledge, reading with visual aids, and exercises that involved pre-, while-, and post-reading activities. As a result, a sample of a reading strategy is given in order to illustrate how teachers worked and designed the manual. Conclusions suggest that the process of designing a manual helped teachers understand their beliefs and practice in teaching reading in a foreign language.

Developing the competences needed to appropriately use linguistic resources according to contextual characteristics (pragmatics) is as important as the culturally-imbedded linguistic knowledge itself (semantics), and both are equally essential to form competent speakers of English in foreign language contexts. As such, this investigation relies on corpus linguistics to analyze both the scope and the limitations of the sociolinguistic knowledge and the communicative skills of English students at university level. To this end, a linguistic corpus was collected from spoken production of EFL learners, compared to an existing corpus of native speakers, and analyzed in terms of the frequency, overuse, underuse, misuse, ambiguity, success, and failure of the linguistic parameters used in speech acts. The findings herein describe the linguistic configurations employed to modify levels and degrees of descriptions (salient semantic theme exhibited in the EFL learners’ corpus). The study discovered problems regarding the students’ production in terms of wrong word choices or forms, faulty word combinations, and incomplete or unsystematic structuring of expressions. It concludes that expressions aiming at conveying or modifying degree are complex and should be viewed as units which require modeling for a better appropriation of an in-context understanding of its linguistic use which corpus can assist.

This quantitative and qualitative case study aims at identifying and categorizing university students’ and academics’ beliefs about learning a foreign language; at comparing the differences in beliefs held by these students from three different semesters and academics from a Chilean university teacher education program about how to learn an L2; and at establishing whether there is any relationship among the subjects’ tolerance of ambiguity levels, their predominating types of beliefs and their academic level. The quantitative instruments included the BALLI by Horwitz (1987) and the Second Language Tolerance of Ambiguity Scale by Ely (1989). Based on experts’ judgments, the BALLI beliefs were classified into three categories: facilitating beliefs of L2 learning, potentially detrimental beliefs of L2 learning, and neutral beliefs. A focus group was conducted with a student sample to elucidate the origin of their beliefs, and content analysis was used on the qualitative data obtained. Differences among the groups were found at the level of specific beliefs but not at the level of the BALLI dimensions. Most subjects were found to hold medium levels of Tolerance of Ambiguity, with no clear relation between these and the type of beliefs nor the students’ academic level.

In this article, we report the final results of a multiple case study that brought together the experiences and reflections of student teachers, cooperating teachers, and advisors about the action research process within the framework of the academic practicum in a foreign language teaching program. Through observations, interviews, focus groups, and research report analyses, the researchers recognized the personal, professional, and political dimensions that guide participants’ teaching and research actions. Findings shed light on issues such as collaboration and engagement to promote conversations that actually connect life in schools and life at the university, and to support continuous learning for teachers. The insights we gained evidenced that the teachers, students, and administrators in the teaching program and their colleagues in the public schools need to strengthen their links through proposals of experiential learning which promote joint efforts, symmetric relationships, and expertise co-construction; thus, enabling all participants to validate their process as individuals, as members of educational institutions, and as key actors in promoting and sustaining a better society.

This article addresses the theoretical references to elaborate a proposal for a radio workshop with a human rights education ́s perspective, orientated to children and young people in socially vulnerable sectors, as well as the acquired lessons of the experience of a real workshop that was implemented to enhance the right to participation of a group of young people from La Pintana district. In addition, it summarizes the analysis of three radio and human rights experiences in Latin America that are inputs for the elaboration of a proposal.

In the context of achieving communication skills and the need to develop skills in line with the socio- cultural contexts of the students, this article discusses the importance of digital school Radio as a medium able to strengthen and improve the learning process of the youth in the Chilean educational context. Thus, this communication defines what is meant by school radio, what is the potential that this tool provides under the Age of Technology, and the relationship we can established between the digital school Radio and plans and programs of the subject of language and communication, and in turn the input that delivers for the development of skills such as creativity, critical thinking and collaborative learning.

The article describes the main features of Radio Nueva Terapia (RNT), a communication project developed in Colina (Chile), which consists on the implementation of radio shows conducted by people diagnosed with severe mental problems. The main purpose of this project is to empower the users of this program under the optics of different theoretical perspectives such as the humanistic psychology and the community psychology. To set this perspective about the empowerment, the article emphasizes, on one hand, the internalized stigma which is inherent to the labeling related with mental health issues, which generates negative perceptions of identity; and, on the other hand, on the benefits that "quality" human relationships have over people. To this extent, this article also highlights the importance of the radio, as a communication tool, in a therapeutic context such as RNT, where the radio is empowered by the impact it has over the immediate context of the participants and their families.